I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.

When snow accumulates week after week, month after month, it works curious miracles.

Use the smallest word that does the job.

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.

Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.

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.

Familiarity is the thing-the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness.