As for you, you are alive. But it's not the same as living.

My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words on the other hand, were a lifeline. They left their hushed rhythm behind, a counter to the slow in and out of Emmeline's breathing.