Words seem like drops of water in a stream that has its own wholeness and its own motion.

Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.

Joe DiMaggio batting sometimes gave the impression, the suggestion that the old rules and dimensions of baseball no longer applied to him, and that the game had at last grown unfairly easy.

To desire to write poems that endure-we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if we succeed we will never know it

Of course newspaper sportswriting is mostly terrible - and of course it is usually the best writing in the paper.

Your presence in this house is almost as painful and enormous as your absence.

But Blake's voices returned to dictate revisions.