I felt the beginning of a passion, hopeless in the long run, but very nourishing, for identifying myself with people who were not my own, and whose lives were governed by ideas alien to mine.

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

Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to please his audience.

The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.

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