A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.

The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!" "Who cares?

I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.

As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn't seen him on their box, buy the paperback.

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.