It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them.

I don't care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.

Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.

He valued life and literature equally for the light they threw upon each other; to his mind one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart.

I have in my own fashion learned the lesson that life is effort, unremittingly repeated.

It might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it.

Make the short story tremendously succinct - with a very short pulse or rhythm - and the closest selection of detail - in other words summarise intensely and deeply and keep down the lateral development. It should be a little gem of bright, quick, vivid form