“Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.”

I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

The most dangerous thing in the world is to make a friend of an Englishman, because he’ll come sleep in your closet rather than spend 10 shillings on a hotel.

A man who doesn’t dream is like a man who doesn’t sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there’s no point in it….for me, every act of the art of solving a mystery.

There is only one unpardonable sin–deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

Everybody has to feel superior to somebody,” she said. “But it’s customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.

It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.

It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something

One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it’s going to be told.

You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.

Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.