At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it.

Now, the old man happened to be the Lord.

One reads alone, even in another's presence.

In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single, homogenous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language.

Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.