One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works.

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

Now that Stevenson is dead I can think of but one English- speaking author who is really keeping his self-respect and sticking forperfection. Of course I refer to that mighty master of language and keen student of human actions and motives, Henry James.

Wherever humanity has made that hardest of all starts and lifted itself out of mere brutality is a sacred spot.

The sincerity of feeling that is possible between a writer and a reader is one of the finest things I know.

Nothing mattered ... but writing books, and living the kind of life that made it possible to write them.

To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.