Young poets are advised by their elders to avoid the practice of journalism as they would wet socks and gin before breakfast.

The one man who should never attempt an explanation of a poem is its author. If the poem can be improved by it's author's explanations it never should have been published, and if the poem cannot be improved by its author's explanations the explanations are scarcely worth reading.

Piety's hard enough to take among the poor who have to practice it. A rich man's piety stinks. It's insufferable.

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.

Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.

Children know the grace of god better than most of us. They see the world the way the morning brings it back to them; new and born and fresh and wonderful.

The only thing about a man that is a man . . . is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse.