The Novelist's--any Writer's--object Is To Whittle Down

At The Age Of Twelve I Was Finding The World Too Small: It Appeared To Me Like A Dull, Trim Back Garden, In Which Only Trivial Games Could Be Played.

Without Fiction, Either Life Would Be Insufficient Or The Winds From The North Would Blow Too Cold.

The Short Story Is At An Advantage Over The Novel, And Can Claim Its Nearer Kinship To Poetry, Because It Must Be More Concentrated, Can Be More Visionary, And Is Not Weighed Down (as The Novel Is Bound To Be) By Facts, Explanation, Or Analysis. I Do Not Mean To Say That The Short Story Is By Any Means Exempt From The Laws Of Narrative: It Must Observe Them, But On Its Own Terms.

Disappointment Tears The Bearable Film Off Life.

With No Banal Reassuring Grown-ups Present, With Grown-up Intervention Taken Away, There Is No Limit To The Terror Strange Children Feel Of Each Other, A Terror Life Obscures But Never Ceases To Justify. There Is No End To The Violations Committed By Children On Children, Quietly Talking Alone.