When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant. John Phillips Marquand More Quotes by John Phillips Marquand More Quotes From John Phillips Marquand It is worthwhile for anyone to have behind him a few generations of honest, hard-working ancestry. John Phillips Marquand There is a certain phase in the life of the aged when the warmth of the heart seems to increase in direct proportion with the years. John Phillips Marquand warmth heart life years I know a fellow who's as broke as the Ten Commandments. John Phillips Marquand know ten-commandments ten broke His father watched him across the gulf of years and pathos which always must divide a father from his son. John Phillips Marquand always father years son