"Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind."

Chamber music -- a conversation between friends.

"For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word."

"Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them."

Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.