“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.”

“My experience of men had long ago taught me that one of the surest ways of begetting an enemy was to do some stranger an act of kindness which should lay upon him the irritating sense of an obligation.”