Art, it seems to me, should simplify.

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.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.

This land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces.

There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.

The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.

Henry Colbert, the miller, always breakfasted with his wife--beyond that he appeared irregularly at the family table.