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.

It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.

I felt the beginning of a passion, hopeless in the long run, but very nourishing, for identifying myself with people who were not my own, and whose lives were governed by ideas alien to mine.

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

Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.

The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.

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