Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole - so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.

From the time the Englishman's bones harden into bones at all, he makes his skeleton a flagstaff, and he early plants his feet like one who is to walk the world and the decks of all the seas.

It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled.

People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know.

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

If you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago.

Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.