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.

The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.

But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them.

A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing.

Why have I so little control? It is the case of much waste and pain in my life.

As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better.

How are we to account for the strange human craving for the pleasure of feeling afraid which is so much involved in our love of ghost stories?