Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.

I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.

Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.

New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.

In every queen there's a touch of floozy.

Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means "sickening to contemplate"; the second means "sick at the stomach." Do not, therefore, say "I feel nauseous," unless you are sure you have that effect on others.

After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.