the breeze brought us a faint sound, as of a distant rat, a huge and mystic rat, gnawing, maybe, at the horizon!

With writing ... you must keep in the habit. After a lapse it will take you not an hour, but a week, a month, maybe, to find your mood again - that mood in which things drop from heaven. There's no forcing it; you can't set your notions in front of you, and stare at them till they take shape; they have to come to you whether you ask them or not. ... And you have to be in the habit of that mood! Of inspiration!

I love old moons. There is something humanized about them; they are dulled a little, and rich in color. One can stare all night at an old moon.

Fingers get habits - have memories of their own.

Songs are usually unfit for whistling - indeed, whistling (except to the person doing it) is unbearable.

The thing one resents about winter is its inactivity; the perpetual sameness of ice-armored hills and snow-blanketed woods. Great things, of course, may be going on underneath; but nature wears a mask, is icily non-committal.

November at its best - with a sort of delightful menace in the air.