Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

We have really no absent friends.

... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.

The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.

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.

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?

in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to know you pick up as you go along.