You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs―the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbs, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate―the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.

The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.

I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.

Look at this tangle of thorns.

Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise; And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.

The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.

There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.