But I should never write what had happened down. One's nature is to forget, and one ought to go by that. Memory is quite unbearable enough, but even so it leaves out quite a lot.

Nothing arrives on paper as it started, and so much arrives that never started at all. To write is always to rave a little-even if one did once know what one meant

All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented.

Temperamentally, the writer exists on happenings, on contacts, conflicts, action and reaction, speed, pressure, tension. Were he acontemplative purely, he would not write.

Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue should be used-to advance the story; not only to show the characters, but to advance.

What is being said is the effect of something that has happened; at the same time, what is being said is in itself something happening, which will, in turn, leave its effect.

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

Style is the thing that's always a bit phony, and at the same time you cannot write without style.

The story must spring from an impression or perception pressing enough to have made the writer write. It should magnetize the imagination and give pleasure.