nobody ever dies of an indignity.

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects; is this not also true of fear?

one should discuss one's difficulties only when they are over.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.

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?

rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.

To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.