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

The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

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.

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

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.