The artist beholds in nature more than she herself Nature is conscious of.

When I am wicked I am in high spirits.

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?

I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.

The "germ," wherever gathered, has ever been for me, "the germ of a story," and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.

He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.