“I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction”

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.”

“Each time in fiction or in history I meet a well-defined personality I am personally interested in him, for we know each other already, because we met on the river.”

“What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”

“I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”