The crown of literature is poetry.

It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.

I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.

As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.

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.

There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.