Some authors have what amounts to a metaphysical approach. They admit to inspiration. Sudden and unaccountable urgencies to writecatapult them out of sleep and bed. For myself, I have never awakened to jot down an idea that was acceptable the following morning.

The grand canyon which yawns between the writer's concept of what he wants to capture in words and what comes through is a cruel abyss.

Nervous hands as if the fingers were dripping from them like icicles.

Charm is an odorless perfume, which cannot be anchored in the chemists' test tube. It is a permeation, a radiation. It emanates from the climate of a warm human spirit, which not only contains light, but gives it off.

There is no adequate definition for creative writing, any more than it is possible to describe pain or flavor or color.

[Wishing her mother had named her Beulah:] At least you did not sit on your beulah.

Any work of art ... is great when it makes you feel that its creator has dipped into your very heart for his sensation.