Quotes

[on writing mysteries (1972)] The prime rule of the game, the masters say, is to plant each clue with the utmost fair play. And that is quite as it ought to be. No once-cheated reader would disagree.

But it's better still to find fair play, too, not just in the 'dun-it' but in the 'who'; to read, not of dolls pulled about by plots, but of humans tied up in their self-made knots.

[on the lasting significance of Eugène Scribe (1941)] The keynote of Scribe's amazing life, as I see it, however, was that Scribe was essentially a businessman. The theatre itself was to him a business. He was more instrumental than he's generally given credit for in making playwriting a paying institution for young writers. He was sort of a union organizer of his own time. This contribution, though aesthetically frowned upon or ignored altogether, is an extremely important one. And the influence of his plays, though not much can be said for their lasting quality, can still be observed everywhere in our current movies and the majority of the standard radio drama... tight, holeproof plots, with characters that are not only types but usually stereotypes.