It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.

A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.

A man is not expected to love his country, lest he make an ass of himself. Yet our country, seen through the mists of smog, is curiously lovable, in somewhat the way an individual who has got himself into an unconscionable scrape seems lovable - or at least deserving of support.

Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.

Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.

The essayist . . . can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast.

If sometimes there seems to be a sort of sameness of sound in The New Yorker, it probably can be traced to the magazine's copydesk, which is a marvelous fortress of grammatical exactitude and stylish convention.