I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story.
Isak DinesenIn the mind and nature of a man a secret is an ugly thing, like a hidden physical defect.
Isak DinesenIt is when one begins to lose the consciousness of freedom, and when the idea of necessity enters the world at all, when there is any hurry or strain anywhere, a letter to be written or a train to catch, when you have got to work, to make the horses of the dream gallop, or to make the rifles go off, that the dream is declining, and turning into the nightmare, which belongs to the poorest and most vulgar class of dreams.
Isak Dinesen