“Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and chasing about that produce a friendship’s more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramatic moments.”

“I well understand why analysts demand high payment, for what can be more tedious than listening to another person recount his dreams?”

“So the days, the last days, blow about in a memory, hazy autumnal, all alike as leaves: until a day unlike any other I've lived”

“She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. In this case, as opposed to the scrupulous method of good taste and scientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly.”

“Most secrets should never be told, but especially those that are more menacing to the listener than to the teller.”

“Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.”

“He had no thought of how it was before he came to the farm. His memory of those times was like a house where no one lives and the furniture has rotten away.”