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

How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.

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

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

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

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