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It's better to be unfaithful than faithful without wanting to be.

Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.

It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be.

When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.

Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them.

Readers of novels often fall into the bad habit of being overly exacting about the characters' moral flaws. They apply to these fictional beings standards that no one they know in real life could possibly meet.

Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.

Lying, stealing, and cheating are commonplace.

Writers are always writing about infidelity. It's so dramatic. The wickedness of it, the secrecy, the complications, the finding that you thought you were one person but you're also this other person. The innocent life and the guilty life. My God, it's just full of stuff for a writer. I doubt it will ever go out of fashion.

As a writer, you rely on whatever makes you up as a person, whether those things are twisted and nasty or otherwise.