The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.

It is part of the novelist's convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance.

That complete statement which is literature.

Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.

The proper stuff of fiction' does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss.

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words.

A light here required a shadow there.