We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.

If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now.