... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, "immortal longings.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.

I suspect victims; they win in the long run.

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had.

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.