Her bedroom window overlooked the garden, and now and then, usually when she was having a bad spell, Mr. Helm had seen her stand long hours gazing into the garden, as though what she saw bewitched her...
Grady for an instant felt the oddest loss: poor Peter, he knew her even less, she realized, than Apple, and yet, because he was her only friend, she wanted to tell him: not now, sometime. And what wou...
Clyde's mother was an ample, olive-dark woman with the worn and disappointed look of someone who had spent her life doing things for others: occasionally the mulling plaintiveness of her voice suggest...
But it's Sunday, Mr. Bell. Clocks are slow on Sundays.
Are the dead as lonesome as the living?
Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.
Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.
It was as if I were an oyster and somebody forced a grain of sand into my shell -- a grain of sand that I didn't know was there and didn't particularly welcome. Then a pearl started forming around the...
I've always seen myself as a winner even as a kid. If I hadn't I just might have gone down the drain a couple of times. I've got something inside of me peasantlike and stubborn and I'm in it 'til...
I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.
Because it's indeed difficult to portray, in any meaningful depth, another being, his appearance, speech, mentality, without to some degree, and often for quite trifling cause, offending him. The trut...
The walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird.
The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’ . . .The land is flat, the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds o...
The blame of course belonged to Clyde, who just was not much given to talk. Also, he seemed very little curious himself: Grady, alarmed sometimes by the meagerness of his inquiries and the indifferenc...
She was still hugging the cat. Poor slob, she said, tickling his head, poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't any right to give him one: he'll have...
Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.
Of many magics, one is watching a beloved sleep: free of eyes and awareness, you for a sweet moment hold the heart of him; helpless, he is then all, and however irrationally, you have trusted him to b...
Let me begin by telling you that I was in love. An ordinary statement, to be sure, but not an ordinary fact, for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportian...
It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I'll give you two.
Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.