The Main Object Of The Novel Is

We Must Know, As Much As Possible, In Our Beautiful Art...what We Are Talking About And The Only Way To Know Is To Have Lived And Loved And Cursed And Floundered And Enjoyed And Suffered. I Think I Don't Regret A Single "excess" Of My Responsive Youth I Only Regret, In My Chilled Age, Certain Occasions And Possibilities I Didn't Embrace.

It Is, I Think, An Indisputable Fact That Americans Are, As Americans, The Most Self-conscious People In The World, And The Most Addicted To The Belief That The Other Nations Of The Earth Are In A Conspiracy To Under Value Them.

The Historian, Essentially, Wants More Documents Than He Can Really Use; The Dramatist Only Wants More Liberties Than He Can Really Take.

The Story Had Held Us, Round The Fire, Sufficiently Breathless, But Except The Obvious Remark That It Was Gruesome, As, On Christmas Eve In An Old House, A Strange Tale Should Essentially Be . . .

No Sovereign, No Court, No Personal Loyalty, No Aristocracy, No Church, No Clergy, No Army, No Diplomatic Service, No Country Gentlemen, No Palaces, No Castles, Nor Manors, Nor Old Country-houses, Nor Parsonages, Nor Thatched Cottages Nor Ivied Ruins No Cathedrals, Nor Abbeys, Nor Little Norman Churches No Great Universities Nor Public Schools -- No Oxford, Nor Eton, Nor Harrow No Literature, No Novels, No Museums, No Pictures, No Political Society, No Sporting Class -- No Epsom Nor Ascot Some Such List As That Might Be Drawn Up Of The Absent Things In American Life.