"All autobiography is self-indulgent."

"When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person."

"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."

"What about the hero of The House on the Strand? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don't really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don't you?"

"Women want love to be a novel, men a short story."

"And I don't like books which are full of name dropping."

"Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind."