A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.

Far be it for me to have worked it out in any abstract way. I don't know why the bull and Mrs. May have to die, or why Mr. Fortune and Mary Fortune: I just feel in my bones that that is the way it has to be. If I had the abstraction first I don't suppose I would write the story.

There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience.

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.