Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.

The whole problem is to establish communication with ones self.

Writing is not an exercise in excision, it's a journey into sound.

I have noticed that most men when they enter a barber shop and must wait their turn, drop into a chair and pick up a magazine. I simply sit down and pick up the thread of my sea wanderings, which began more than fifty years ago and is not quite ended. There is hardly a waiting room in the east that has not served as my cockpit, whether I was waiting to board a train or to see a dentist. And I am usually still trimming sheets when the train starts or drill begins to whine.

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down.

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.