Childish fantasy, like the sheath over the bud, not only protects but curbs the terrible budding spirit, protects not only innocence from the world, but the world from the power of innocence.

The story must spring from an impression or perception pressing enough to have made the writer write. It should magnetize the imagination and give pleasure.

Good-byes breed a sort of distaste for whomever you say good-bye to; this hurts, you feel, this must not happen again.

Memory must be patchy; what is more alarming is its face-savingness. Something in one shrinks from catching it out - unique to oneself, one's own, one's claim to identity, it implicates one's identity in its fibbing.

Disappointment tears the bearable film off life.

...there must be something she wanted; and that therefore she was no lady.

children like change - for one thing, they never anticipate regret.