The infantile cowardice of our time which demands an external pattern, a nonhuman authority.

A self-advertising writer is always a self-extinguished writer.

Around, around the sun we go: The moon goes round the earth. We do not die of death: We die of vertigo.

Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world.

We have learned the answers, all the answers: it is the question that we do not know.

What once was cuddled must learn to kiss The cold wonn's mouth. That's all the mystery.

Autumn is the American season. In Europe the leaves turn yellow or brown, and fall. Here they take fire on the trees and hang there flaming. We think this frost-fire is a portent somehow: a promise that the continent has given us. Life, too, we think, is capable of taking fire in this country; of creating beauty never seen.