Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

One of the amusements of being old is that I have no illusions about my literary position. I have been taken very seriously, but I have also seen essays by clever young men on contemporary fiction who would never think of considering me. I no longer mind what people think. On the whole, I have done what I set out to do. Now my age makes everyone take me very seriously. If you are a writer, live a long time. I have found that longevity counts more than talent.

Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are; because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

Poor Henry [James], he’s spending eternity wandering round and round a stately park and the fence is just too high for him to peep over and they’re having tea just too far away for him to hear what the countess is saying.

Prose alliteration should be used only for a special reason; when used by accident it falls upon the ear very disagreeably.

Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.

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.

Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way.