The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day.

Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know.

I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.

A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted.

A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts.

Everything was in stark and dreadful contrast with the trivial crises and counterfeit emotions of Hollywood, and I returned to England deeply moved and emotionally worn out.