Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are "shaggy dog" stories; they have a... point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There was ... a large, shaggy dog, whose nose, report said, was full of porcupine quills. I can testify that he looked very sober.... This is the usual fortune of pioneer dogs, for they have to face the brunt of the battle for their race.... When a generation or two have used up all their enemies' darts, their successors lead a comparatively easy life. We owe to our fathers analogous blessings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now ...include my little dog Fala. Well, of course I don't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, learning that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him--at a cost to the tax payers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars--his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alexander Woollcott broadcasts the story of the wife who returned a dog to the Seeing Eye with this note attached: "I am sending t...he dog back. My husband used to depend on me. Now he is independent, and I never know where he is."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But a dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down--very important traits in times l...ike these. In fact, just as soon as a dog comes along who, in addition to these qualities, also knows when to buy and sell stocks, he can be moved right up to the boy's bedroom and the boy can sleep in the dog house.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... no book ... ever competed with the Bible. The story of Ruth was better than Ramona, and the poetry of Job was better than Long...fellow. I still have my first big Bible, carefully underlined through with red and black ink, and interleafed [sic] with painfully written manuscript pages.... Margery and I earned our five cents a week for church and a penny for Sunday school by learning three verses of the Bible a day and six on Sunday. We learned dozens and dozens of chapters. I supposed "Evangeline" and "Hiawatha" were better poetry, but I didn't like them so well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The short story is at an advantage over the novel, and can claim its nearer kinship to poetry, because it must be more concentrate...d, can be more visionary, and is not weighed down (as the novel is bound to be) by facts, explanation, or analysis. I do not mean to say that the short story is by any means exempt from the laws of narrative: it must observe them, but on its own terms.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to wha...t? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I read a story, I relive the moment from which it sprang. A scene burned itself into me, a building magnetized me, a mood or ...season of Nature's penetrated me, history suddenly appeared to me in some tiny act, or a face had begun to haunt me before I glanced at it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, al...lows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, "immortal longings."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »