James Barrie

“ It is a terrible business if one is to have no sense at all about his own work. Wandering in darkness.
To return to cheerier topics. I don't often go to the theatre, though I always go to Mr. Shaw's plays, not so much for ordinary reasons as to see whether I can find an explanation for that extraordinary remark of his. But I will tell you what I think is the best play written in my time. My reason for considering it the best is that it is the one I have thought most about since, not perhaps a bad test. ”

“ At present I am residing on an island. It is called Typee, and so you will not be surprised to hear that my companion's name is Fyaway. She is a dusky maid, composed of abstractions but not in the least elusive. She is just little bits of the golden girls who have acted for me and saved my plays. ”

“ It is not a bad story, though unfortunately the critic comes rather well out of it; indeed I would not repeat it here except that I come rather well out of it also. It marks the night when I decided upon a rule of conduct with regard to you gentlemen, which, so far as I can remember, I have never broken. An historic occasion for me, therefore, and I am sorry I cannot remember what the weather was like. The criticized was one of my first books, a Scotch novel, and the critic was a man to whom I suppose everyone here would take off his hat in homage and in proud memory—Andrew Lang. ”

“ Few have tried harder to be simple and direct. I have also always thought that I was rather realistic. In this matter, gentlemen, if I may say it without any ill-feeling, as indeed I do, you have damped me a good deal, and sometimes put out the light altogether. ”

“ Forbes-Robertson retired so that he could lend to us, on the island, his silver voice, and Du Maurier pulls in with Bancroft to make sure that we are not acting. There is no theatre as yet, but Charles Frohman is looking for a site. For the dead are here also, and you can hardly distinguish them from the living. ”

“ However you may ram it in—I refer to the rapier—I have a fear that something disastrous is about to happen to you in the so much more important part of your life that has nothing to do with the pen—bad news, ill health, sudden loss ”