It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There's plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time.

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her.

Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.

I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.

Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.

A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore.