The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.

The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.

Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.

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.

I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.

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.