Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.

Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.

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

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.

Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.

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.

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