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Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?""Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it's dead right, ...more

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this is the weakness of most 'edifying' or 'propaganda' literature. There is no diversity...You cannot, in fact, give God His due without giving the d...more

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The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.

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A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a...more

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I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction “from the woman...more

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For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is— limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and the courage to take ...more

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She had her image… and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it some day. In the meanwhile she had got her mood o...more

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Persons curious in chronology may, if they like, work out from what they already know of the Wimsey family that the action of the book takes place in ...more

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To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or

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To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life., 8 Septem...more

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[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

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The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write th...more

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[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be ...more

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The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly discouraged by Jesus of Nazareth. Not that the Vic...more

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We may properly and profitably amuse ourselves by distinguishing those writers who are respectively 'father-ridden,' 'son-ridden,' and 'ghost-ridden.'...more