You can only really get under anybody’s skin if you are married to them.
Does the real thing ever have the perfection of a stage performance?
I can’t imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author’s business to write, not talk.
How often have I not heard a perfectly intelligent female says, in the tone of one clinching an argument, ‘Edgar says – ’ And all the time you are perfectly aware that Edgar is a perfect fool.
Never worry about what you say to a man. They’re so conceited that they never believe you mean it if it’s unflattering.
Desperate ills need desperate remedies.
Men don’t understand how their mannerisms can get on women’s nerves so that you feel you just have to snap.
Writers are diffident creatures – they need encouragement.
You’re shocked, Mr. Burton, at hearing what our gossiping little town thinks. I can tell you this – they always think the worst!
It is my experience that no one, in the course of conversation, can fail to give themselves away sooner or later. Everyone has an irresistible urge to talk about themselves.
I like to inquire into everything. Hercule Poirot is a good dog. The good dog follows the scent, and if, regrettably, there is no scent to follow, he noses around – seeking always something that is not very nice.
The lure of the past came up to grab me. To see a dagger slowly appearing, with its gold glint, through the sand was romantic. The carefulness of lifting pots and objects from the soil filled me with a longing to be an archaeologist myself.
Youth is a failing only too easily outgrown.
It’s very inconvenient to be loved. Nearly everyone has found that out, sooner or later. The fewer people who love you the less you will have to suffer.
Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?
With thought, all problems can be resolved.
I always take abroad with me one really good soft pillow – to me it makes all the difference between comfort and misery.
We are the same people as we were at three, six, ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so, perhaps, at six or seven, because we were not pretending so much then.
It’s not a man’s working hours that are important – it’s his leisure hours. That’s the mistake we all make.
I can think of nothing more soul destroying in life than to persist in trying to do a thing you want desperately to do well, and to know that you are at the best second rate.