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.

But suppose, asks the student of the professor, we follow all your structural rules for writing, what about that something else that brings the book alive? What is the formula for that? The formula for that is not included in the curriculum.

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.

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

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

The literary wiseacres prognosticate in many languages, as they have throughout so many centuries, setting the stage for new hautmonde in letters and making up the public's mind.

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