I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her lips; they were closed tight.

Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and is it is cool and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit again.

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.

You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across, not just to depict life, or criticize it, but to actually make it alive.

But did thee feel the earth move?

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.