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This is not to say that no one really knows what fiction is or what its limits are; it is simply to recognize that the value or “staying power” of any piece of literature has to do, finally, with the character and personality of the artist who created it—his instincts, his knowledge of art and the …

Art depends heavily on feeling, intuition, taste. It is feeling, not some rule, that tells the abstract painter to put his yellow here and there, not there, and may later tell him that it should have been brown or purple or pea-green. It’s feeling that makes the composer break surprisingly from his…

What the beginning writer ordinarily wants is a set of rules on what to do and what not to do in writing fiction. As we’ll see, some general principles can be set down (Things to Think About When Writing Fiction) and some very general warnings can be offered (Things to Watch Out For); but on the wh…

“One cannot look for a good time, Sergius,” he whispered in his mind to me, thinking of how I first had come to Desert D’Or, “for pleasure must end as love or cruelty”—and almost as an afterthought, he added—“or obligation.” In that way, Eitel thought of me, and with a kindly sadness he wondered, “…

He held her to him, and fondled her hair, feeling a sense of protection which bid her to stop here and ask no more; for of all the distance she had come, and he had helped her to move, and there were times like this when he felt the substance of his pride to depend upon exactly her improvement as i…