“Don't worry,' he said. 'So long as the facts are there, I can write the story. But please,' he added, 'let me have plenty of detail. That's what counts in our business, tiny little details, like you had a broken shoelace on your left shoe, or a fly settled on the rim of your glasses at lunch, or the man you were talking to had a broken front tooth...”

“Details are our business as writers. Your heart leaps when you see a detail that can go somewhere”

“Jake had never felt like such a fool for keeping a promise. He'd broken plenty of others he should have kept. Why had he kept one he should have broken?”

“The count came back to young Morcerf.'Don't you think,' he said, 'on reflection that you were wrong to speak in that way about your mother-in-law in front of Debray?''Please, Count,' Morcerf said. 'I beg you, don't use that word in anticipation.”

“This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.”

“Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.”