The image of the presence, whatever it was, waiting there for him to go -this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short - he hung back from really seeing. The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this moment an awful specific form.

It had been agreed between them that lighted candles at wayside inns, in strange countries amid mountain scenery, gave the evening meal a peculiar poetry.

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

You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.

She is like a revolving lighthouse; pitch darkness alternating with a dazzling brilliancy!

Never say you know the last word about any human heart.

To believe in a child is to believe in the Future.