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

Temperamentally, the writer exists on happenings, on contacts, conflicts, action and reaction, speed, pressure, tension. Were he acontemplative purely, he would not write.

memory is to love what the saucer is to the cup.

whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.

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.

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?

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.