We Have Really No Absent Friends.

One's Sentiments -- Call Them That -- One's Fidelities Are So Instinctive That One Hardly Knows They Exist: Only When They Are Betrayed Or, Worse Still, When One Betrays Them Does One Realize Their Power.

The Novelist's--any Writer's--object Is To Whittle Down His Meaning To The Exactest And Finest Possible Point. What, Of Course, Isfatal Is When He Does Not Know What He Does Mean: He Has No Point To Sharpen.

Roughly, The Action Of A Character Should Be Unpredictable Before It Has Been Shown, Inevitable When It Has Been Shown. In The First Half Of A Novel, The Unpredictability Should Be The More Striking. In The Second Half, The Inevitability Should Be The More Striking.

Princess Bibesco Delighted In A Semi-ideal World - A World Which, Though Having A Counterpart In Her Experience, Was To A Great Extent Brought Into Being By Her Own Temperament And, One Might Say, Flair.

Never To Lie Is To Have No Lock On Your Door, You Are Never Wholly Alone.