... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.

Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having been reached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.

Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.

[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.

Ghosts seem harder to please than we are; it is as though they haunted for haunting’s sake -- much as we relive, brood, and smoulder over our pasts.

There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.