The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

The story must spring from an impression or perception pressing enough to have made the writer write. It should magnetize the imagination and give pleasure.

Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

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

Curiosity in Rome is a form of courtesy.

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

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.