The vampire was a complete change from the usual romantic characters I was playing, but it was a success.
The writer, an old man with a white moustache, had some difficulty getting into bed.
The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.
The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men.
The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist's imaginative life there is purpose. There is determination to give the tale, the song, the painting, form -- to make it true and real to the theme, not to life.
If I can write everything out plainly, perhaps I will myself understand better what has happened.
Nothing happens quite by chance. It's a question of accretion of information and experience. . . it's just chance that I happened to be here at this particular time when there was available and at my disposal the great experience of all the investigators who plodded along for a number of years.
The only one I really like is a song called Saccharine.
Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue?
The difference between a politician and a pickpocket is that a pickpocket doesn't always get indignant when you tell him to keep his hands to himself.