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

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.

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.

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.

Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.

Among the masked dandies of Edwardian comedy, Max Beerbohm is the most happily armored by a deep and almost innocent love of himself as a work of art.