The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.

One's writing is good only when the intelligence and the imagination are in equilibrium. As soon as one of them overbalances the other, it's all up; you may as well throw it away and begin afresh.

But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures.

My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons…

Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.

I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine.

One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen.