Art, at any rate in a novel, must be indissolubly linked with craft.

[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye.

The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.

Good-byes breed a sort of distaste for whomever you say good-bye to; this hurts, you feel, this must not happen again.