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

We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.

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

It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.

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.

The difference between farce and humour in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humour varies its note, changes its key, grows and spreads and deepens until it may indeed reach tragic depths.

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.