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

Dogs are a habit, I think.

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.

every short story is an experiment - what one must ask is not only, did it come off, but was it, as an experiment, worth making?

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

Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we sometimes hear in each other that keep our banter from utter banality.