What One Wants To Do With Stories

I Am Firmly Of The Opinion That People Who Can’t Speak Have Nothing To Say. It’s One More Thing We Do To The Poor, The Deprived: Cut Out Their Tongues … Allow Them A Language As Lousy As Their Life

When Reviewers Take The Trouble To Compliment A Writer On Her Style, It Is Usually Because She Has Made It Easy For Them To Slide From One Sentence To Another Like An Otter Down A Slope.

In General, I Would Think That At Present Prose Writers Are Much In Advance Of The Poets. In The Old Days, I Read More Poetry Than Prose, But Now It Is In Prose Where You Find Things Being Put Together Well, Where There Is Great Ambition, And Equal Talent. Poets Have Gotten So Careless, It Is A Disgrace. You Can’t Pick Up A Page. All The Words Slide Off.

It Art Can Only Succeed Through The Cooperating Imagination And Intelligence Of Its Consumers, Who Fill Out, For Themselves, The Artist's World And Make It Round, And Whose Own Special Genius Partly Determine The Ultimate Glory Of It.

So If Hunger Provokes Wailing And Wailing Brings The Breast; If The Breast Permits Sucking And Milk Suggests Its Swallow; If Swallowing Issues In Sleep And Stomachy Comfort, Then Need, Ache, Message, Object, Act, And Satisfaction Are Soon Associated Like Charms On A Chain; Shortly Our Wants Begin To Envision The Things Which Well Reduce Them, And The Organism Is Finally Said To Wish.