every short story is an experiment - what one must ask is not only, did it come off, but was it, as an experiment, worth making?

When one is a child, the disposition of objects, tables and chairs and doors, seems part of the natural order: a house-move lets in chaos - as it does for a dog.

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

Have not all poetic truths been already stated? The essence of a poetic truth is that no statement of it can be final.

Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland.

When I read a story, I relive the moment from which it sprang. A scene burned itself into me, a building magnetized me, a mood orseason of Nature's penetrated me, history suddenly appeared to me in some tiny act, or a face had begun to haunt me before I glanced at it.

The novelist's--any writer's--object is to whittle down his meaning to the exactest and finest possible point. What, of course, isfatal is when he does not know what he does mean: he has no point to sharpen.