The short story is at an advantage over the novel, and can claim its nearer kinship to poetry, because it must be more concentrated, can be more visionary, and is not weighed down (as the novel is bound to be) by facts, explanation, or analysis. I do not mean to say that the short story is by any means exempt from the laws of narrative: it must observe them, but on its own terms.

We are minor in everything but our passions.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.

We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.

I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.

Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.