writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.

Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.

Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger?

The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better.

It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights.

I pity people who do not care for Society. They are poorer for the oblation they do not make.