Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having been reached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.

On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do.

very young people are true but not resounding instruments.

The short story is at an advantage over the novel, and can claim its nearer kinship to poetry, because it must be more concentrated, can be more visionary, and is not weighed down (as the novel is bound to be) by facts, explanation, or analysis. I do not mean to say that the short story is by any means exempt from the laws of narrative: it must observe them, but on its own terms.

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?

I think the main thing, don't you, is to keep the show on the road.

But surely love wouldn't get so much talked about if there were not something in it?