The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything

I can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home - a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn't forget that sort of association.

The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.

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 who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.

But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig." "Well", said Mrs. Zuckerman, "it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.

We stand or fall by television.