A classic,' suggested Anthony, 'is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion.

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

If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter--as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.

Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.

I never blame failure - there are too many complicated situations in life - but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.

She was overstrained with grief and loneliness: almost any shoulder would have done as well.

And Yale is November, crisp and energetic.