[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion.

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don't know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hardand tortuous to write a bad one.

Eyes - the head's chief of police. They watch and make mental notes.

I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view - I change it every month - and so I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind.