“There are some catastrophes that a poor writer's pen cannot describe and which he is obliged to leave to the imagination of his readers with a bald statement of the facts.”

“Such hours are beautiful to live, but hard to describe, so I will leave it to the imagination of my readers, merely saying that the house was full of genuine happiness.”

“The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.”

“In reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have perceived in himself.”

“ It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost—not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions. All of which is to say: stories, too, are wild things. ”

“Vision, emotion, sincerity, passion and creativity. Without these attributes a writer has only his pen with which to speak to his audience”