Every writer at the New Yorker is smarter than me.

You can't imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and 'load every rift' of your subject with ore.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.

The one who is not being born is dying.

Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.