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

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.

Because of the influence of the cinema, most reports or stories of violence are so pictorial that they lack content or meaning. The camera brings them to our eyes, but does not settle them in our minds, nor in time.

Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.

Among the masked dandies of Edwardian comedy, Max Beerbohm is the most happily armored by a deep and almost innocent love of himself as a work of art.

Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.

Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.