All a writer's characters are imaginary, no matter whether they are based on real people or not. They are people as one imagines them to be..

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse..

Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society,….

Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilized folk to despise war..

It is one of the many merits of this admirable biography of Proust's mother that it invites one to return to the novel with perhaps a fuller understa….

We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible..