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

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?

Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.

Sacrificers are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those they sacrifice.

But complex people are never certain that they are not crooks, never certain their passports are quite in order, and are, therefore, unnerved by the slightest thing.

After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee.

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.