rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.

The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.

In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.

It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.

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.

First love, with its frantic haughty imagination, swings its object clear of the everyday, over the rut of living, making him all looks, silences, gestures, attitudes, a burning phrase with no context.