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.

The story must spring from an impression or perception pressing enough to have made the writer write. It should magnetize the imagination and give pleasure.

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

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

Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?