The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters.

It's true that the young who now flock to script writing, or producing and directing, to fulfill the demands of these new devices would, in an earlier period, have been submitting to magazines and working on their first novels. But even in the midst of all these "digital products," the wonder of it is that there are still so many young writers who continue to believe in the venerable print novel as the corridor to fame and fortune.

In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.

The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.

The butterfly lures us not only because he is beautiful, but because he is transitory. The caterpillar is uglier, but in him we can regard the better joy of becoming.

What we think we are surely going to do, we don't do; and what we never intended to do, we may one day notice that we have done, and done, and done.

The engineering is secondary to the vision.