Certain books come to meet me, as do people.

... love dreads being isolated, being left to speak in a void -- at the beginning it would often rather listen than speak.

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.

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.

The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.

we can surmount the anger we feel. To find oneself like a young tree inside a tomb is to discover the power to crack the tomb and grow up to any height.

[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.