The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.

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.

Two things are terrible in childhood: helplessness (being in other people's power) and apprehension - the apprehension that something is being concealed from us because it is too bad to be told.

The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.

I do like Italian graves; they look so much more lived in.

the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon

nothing is more restful than conformity.