I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and just as complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

It__ remarkable that a device, which fits in your pocket, can hold thousands of books. But a room full of books is an entirely different kind of remarkable.

If you're frightened of the countless number of books in the library, you'll never write anything, until you close your eyes and hold the pen.

Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so there wasn__ as much pressure to present a respectable exterior. And secondly, there was no social media. So if you were found face down on the floor _ people did do that quite a bit; usually men, but not always _ or fell through plate glass windows or got into scrapes, it became a rumour, and rumours are hard to pin down.

But writing is a queer business. If one does anything that is sharp and keep enough to go over the line, to get itself with the work that is taken seriously, one has to have had either an unusual knowledge of or a peculiar sympathy with the characters one handles. One can__ write about what one most admires always__ou must, by some accident, have seen into your character very deeply, and it is this accident of intense realization of him that give your writing about him tone and distinction, that lifts it above the commonplace, in other words