The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges...

At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these-'God bless Captain Vere!'

But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep. Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep. I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there? Just ea…

Marvel not that having been made acquainted with the young sailor's essential innocence (an irruption of heretic thought hard to suppress) the worthy man lifte…

I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.

I wanted readers to be genuinely unsure as to whether she's telling the truth or lying. It meant making her partly sympathetic, and partly unsympathetic, which…

That is the best story he could find in his life, never mind if it's the truest: an artist's duty is always to tell the best story.