The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.

I have no warm up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink.

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

A breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.