Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.

The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.

It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened.

Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.

It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.

The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.

It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent; but there is talent in the tongues.