The story was gradually taking shape. Pilon liked it this way. It ruined a story to have it all come out quickly. The good story lay in half-told thi… - John Steinbeck

The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer’s own experience.

Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbed ecstatic mountains and floundered in the rocky darkness between the peaks. He had spurts of bravery but they were bracketed in battens of cowardice.

It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

It is strange to an American that the English, who love dogs and rarely eat them, nevertheless are brutal with vegetables. It is just one of those national differences which are unfathomable.