A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.

[A] finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange.

Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful.

Dickens didn't write what people wanted. He wanted what people wanted.

You say grace before meals. I say grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

To these things do writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they “talk for effect”; and then the writers answer: “What the devil else should we talk for? Ineffectualness?