Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

Wariness had driven away poetry; from hesitating to feel came the moment when you no longer could.

Short of a small range of physical acts-a fight, murder, lovemaking-dialogue is the most vigorous and visible inter-action of which characters in a novel are capable. Speech is what characters do to each other.

Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning.

whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.

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