No one is shallow and vulgar forever; sooner or later the whole species likes to be profound.

The more original a short-story writer, the odder looking the assortment of things he or she puts together for a story.

The principle of literature is devotion to the particulars of life.

An essay is a work of literary art which has a minimum of one anecdote and one universal idea.

Literature has low enough standards. But we can avoid writing the worst literature if we make ourselves ask ourselves, every two or three sentences we write, 'Is that what I really think?'

It is very difficult to teach navigation theory to someone who clings to the shore.

your soul needs to be lonely so that its strangest elements can moil about, curl and growl and jump, fail and get triumphant, all inside you. Sociable people have the most trouble hearing their unconscious. They have trouble getting rid of clichés because clichés are sociable.