It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else.

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.

A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.

A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.

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