The Craft Of The Novelist Does Lie

The Novelist's--any Writer's--object Is To Whittle Down His Meaning To The Exactest And Finest Possible Point. What, Of Course, Isfatal Is When He Does Not Know What He Does Mean: He Has No Point To Sharpen.

Ghosts Seem Harder To Please Than We Are; It Is As Though They Haunted For Haunting’s Sake -- Much As We Relive, Brood, And Smoulder Over Our Pasts.

... A Novel Survives Because Of Its Basic Truthfulness, Its Having Within It Something General And Universal, And A Quality Of Imaginative Perception Which Applies Just As Much Now As It Did In The Fifty Or Hundred Or Two Hundred Years Since The Novel Came To Life.

There's Something So Showy About Desperation, It Takes Hard Wits To See It's A Grandiose Form Of Funk.

... In Nine Out Of Ten Cases The Original Wish To Write Is The Wish To Make Oneself Felt[ellipsis In Source] The Non-essential Writer Never Gets Past That Wish.