A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.

No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.

But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you; it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.