If [the writer] achieves anything noble, anything enduring, it must be by giving himself absolutely to his material. And this gift of sympathy is his great gift; is the fine thing in him that alone can make his work fine.

Ah! the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves! Until then we have not lived.

The air was cool enough to make the warm sun pleasant on one's back and shoulders, and so clear that the eye could follow a hawk up and up, into the blazing blue depths of the sky.

Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.

Every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure, a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique.

A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they are in love with somebody.