There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it.

The rich were dull and they drank too much or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Julian and his roma…