A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

For the film maker must come by his convention, as painters and writers and musicians have done before him.

And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.

Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradles. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself.

a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears on the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.