“Roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing it.”

“People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart.”

“[Northrop] Frye was concerned mostly with literary criticism, and myths interested him as structural elements in works of literature. He used the word myth to mean story, without attaching any connotation of truth or falsehood to it; but a myth is a story of a certain kind. The myths of a culture are those stories it takes seriously—the ones that are thought to be a key to its identity.”

“Books and characters in books, pictures and elements in pictures—they all have families and ancestors, just like people.”

“You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.”

“Walking into the crowd was like sinking into a stew - you became an ingredient, you took on a certain flavour.”

“her face might be kindly if she would smile”