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.

Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing.

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

The map of America is a map of endlessness, of opening out, of forever and ever. No man's face would make you think of it but his hope might, his courage might.

Freedom is the right to one's dignity as a man.

A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off

We have no choice but to be guilty. God is unthinkable if we are innocent.