Because of the influence of the cinema, most reports or stories of violence are so pictorial that they lack content or meaning. The camera brings them to our eyes, but does not settle them in our minds, nor in time.

Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.

Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.

It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?

It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening.

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.