She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him.

Dialogue has to show not only something about the speaker that is its own revelation, but also maybe something about the speaker that he doesn't know but the other character does know.

My mother read secondarily for information; she sank as a hedonist into novels. She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him.

For the night was not impartial. No, the night loved some more than others, served some more than others.

The very greatest mystery is in unsheathed reality itself.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures.