At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.

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?

The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.

People in love, in whom every sense is open, cannot beat off the influence of a place.

Autumn arrives in the early morning.

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

The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.