Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

Sometimes you know the story. Sometimes you make it up as you go along and have no idea how it will come out.

Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.

He knew he would not be afraid. Even if he ever was afraid he knew that he could do it anyway.

Now I am depressed myself,' I said. 'That's why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.

Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.

Life breaks us all but in the end we are stronger in the broken places.