Few of humanity's characteristics are more disconcerting than its ability to reduce world-events to its own level, wherever this may happen to be.

Most men, whether men or women, wish above all else to be comfortable, and thought is a pre-eminently uncomfortable process; it brings to the individual far more suffering than happiness in a semi-civilised world which still goes to war.

So many people seem to imagine that because the actual tools of writing are easily accessible, it is less difficult than the other arts. This is entirely an illusion.

An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.

If the would-be writer studies people in their everyday lives and discovers how to make his characters in their quieter moods interesting to his readers, he will have learned far more than he can ever learn from the constant presentation of crises.

However deep our devotion may be to parents or to children, it is our contemporaries alone with whom understanding is instinctive and entire.

few things are more rewarding than a child's open uncalculating devotion.