Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger?

Nothing arrives on paper as it started, and so much arrives that never started at all. To write is always to rave a little-even if one did once know what one meant

Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.

nobody ever dies of an indignity.

writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.

When I read a story, I relive the moment from which it sprang. A scene burned itself into me, a building magnetized me, a mood orseason of Nature's penetrated me, history suddenly appeared to me in some tiny act, or a face had begun to haunt me before I glanced at it.

Imagination of my kind is most caught, most fired, most worked upon by the unfamiliar: I have thrivenon the changes and chances, the dislocations andcontrasts which have made up so much of my life.