Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.

Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere.

Imagination, which is a quality writers must have, does not mean the ability to weave pretty stories out of nothing. In the right sense, imagination is a response to what is going on — a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation.

Setting ... is accident. Either a building is part of a place, or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger.

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

There is often a good deal of the child left in people who have had to grow up too soon.

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.