Someone soon to start on a journey is always a little holy.

To the sun Rome owes its underlying glow, and its air called golden - to me, more the yellow of white wine; like wine it raises agreeability to poetry.

very young people are true but not resounding instruments.

... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, "immortal longings.

Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.

All my life I have said, "Whatever happens there will always be tables and chairs"--and what a mistake.

the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon