M. R. James quotes:

Do I believe in ghosts?...I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me.

You can drive at 16, go to war at 18, drink at 21, and retire at 65. So who can say what age you have to be to find your true love?

Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic point of view I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it.

A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: "If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!

I heard one cry in the night, and I heard one laugh afterwards. If I cannot forget that, I shall not be able to sleep again.

If any of [my stories] succeed in causing their readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable when walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours, my purpose in writing them will have been attained.

Yes, I definitely prefer the daylight population of the playing fields to that which comes there after dark.