It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.

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

Exhibitionism and a nervous wish for concealment, for anonymity, thus battle inside the buyer of any piece of clothing.

Art, at any rate in a novel, must be indissolubly linked with craft.

Dialogue is the ideal means of showing what is between the characters. It crystallizes relationships. It should, ideally, be so effective as to make analysis or explanation of the relationships between the characters unnecessary.

... it appears to me that problems, inherent in any writing, loom unduly large when one looks ahead. Though nothing is easy, little is quite impossible.

All my life I have said, "Whatever happens there will always be tables and chairs"--and what a mistake.