When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing, haloed suns.

Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.

Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are

The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.