A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.