Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room."

"A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although. . . he may be permitted to be an intellectual."

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.

The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.

"Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book."