Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

A soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.

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

A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.

Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.

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.

The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity.