Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.

For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

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.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.