The Irish landowner, partly from laziness but also from an indifferent delicacy, does not interfere in the lives of the people round. Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland, but these cannot operate the whole time: on the whole, the landowner leaves his tenants and work-people to make their own mistakes, while he makes his.

In big houses in which things are done properly, there is always the religious element. The diurnal cycle is observed with more feeling when there are servants to do the work.

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.

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

Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.

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.

When one is a child, the disposition of objects, tables and chairs and doors, seems part of the natural order: a house-move lets in chaos - as it does for a dog.