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Tragedy without comedy is melodrama, and comedy without a higher purpose is vacant.

Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.

War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.

I think the best romantic comedies don't have villains.

Society mends its wounds. And that's invariably true in all the tragedies, in the comedies as well. And certainly in the histories.

Tragedy is a literary concept.

Plot is tremendously important to me: I can't stand books where nothing happens, and I can't imagine ever writing a novel without at least one murder.

Even the greatest poets can't express tragedy in a way that is larger than their immediate circumstances.

I like the tragedies way more than the comedies because they're so universal.

The Browning love story? It is an ideal, all too rare, and yet I hardly think it strange. It would have been far stranger had the fates allowed those two brilliant passionate souls to beat themselves out in silence.