Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to please his audience.

A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.

It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else.

It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent; but there is talent in the tongues.

On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.

The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.