Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out.

New York rose out of the water like a great wave that found it impossible to return again and so remained there in horror, peering out of the million windows man had caged it with.

When autumn shadows throw their patterns across the land, they are not the images of fragile, dying leaves, not the bared arms of lofty elms, not shadows of a fading summer; but swinging shapes as of books upon a strap, of round and square boxes held under an arm, of hurrying little people heading towards the nearest school.

I can draw and write, and you'd be foolish not to hire me.

Yes, we who are full to the gorge with misery should look well around, doubting everything seen, done, spoken, precisely because we have a word for it, and not its alchemy

What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance?

God, children know something they can't tell; they like Red Riding Hood and the wolf in bed!