I think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realize how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.

It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.

Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake.

It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.

Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.