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?

But surely love wouldn't get so much talked about if there were not something in it?

Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market - you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won't get over the right stile.

to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.

Each piece of dialogue MUST be "something happening". . .The "amusing" for its OWN sake should above all be censored. . .The functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the writer's mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.

What is being said is the effect of something that has happened; at the same time, what is being said is in itself something happening, which will, in turn, leave its effect.

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