"There is nothing sweeter than a description which flies to the thing it describes and fits it, like a key hurled from ten feet slotting into its lock."
"What is important is that you, the writer, sympathise with each expression of each character at the moment they are making it. A novel free of any moral framework runs the risk of dullness. But there is a difference between making a sharp observation about your characters’ behaviour, or about the behaviour of people in general, and making a judgement about it. The observation is the writer’s; the judgement is the reader’s. Yet by making the observation, you are inviting the judgement."
"Disconnected remarks, chance meetings are transformed to controvertible proofs in the eyes of a man with imagination, provided there is a little fire in his heart."
- Schiller, as quoted in Stendhal’s Scarlet and Black
