On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.

We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.

A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.

The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.

The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.

It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else.

The difference between farce and humour in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humour varies its note, changes its key, grows and spreads and deepens until it may indeed reach tragic depths.