"She once complained that her stories were like 'birds bred in cages,' but that concentrated atmosphere, that claustrophobic hothouse of emotion, was her talent. Her stories were little masterpieces of compression: she succinctly contained whole lifetimes in a few pages, every moment loaded with as much as it could bear."

Source: Katie Roiphe (2007). “Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939”, p.70, Dial Press