Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.

One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.

In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another; loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching.

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.

Sometimes," I ventured, "it doesn't occur to boys that their mother was ever young and pretty. . . I couldn't stand it if you boys were inconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who looked after you. You see I was very much in love with your mother once, and I know there's nobody like her.

There was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.

You must not begin to fret about the successes of cheap people. After all, what have they to do with you?