It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.

In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.

Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.

Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.