He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.

he was figuratively following along beside her as she walked the fence, ready to catch her if she should fall.

So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.

Reporting the extreme things as if they were the average things will start you on the art of fiction.

Every author ought to write every book as if he were going to be beheaded the day he finished it.

I noticed that she wore her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes-there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon a golf course on clean, crisp, mornings.

I talk with the authority of failure - Ernest with the authority of success. We could never sit across the same table again.