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

I know one husband and wife who, whatever the official reasons given to the court for the break up of their marriage, were really divorced because the husband believed that nobody ought to read while he was talking and the wife that nobody ought to talk while she was reading.

We should never be at the mercy of Providence if only we understood that we ourselves are Providence.

I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on, no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case of musterd gas - the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great musterd coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying their throats are closing and they know they will choke.

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

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.