In most good stories, it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.

Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.

She felt that she would have to be much more than just a doctor or an engineer. She would have to be a saint.

The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.

I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.

I have also led you astray by talking of technique as if it were something that could be separated from the rest of the story. Technique can't operate at all, of course, except on believable material.

The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.