An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.

Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.

A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.

A schoolchild should be taught grammar—for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.

Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.

In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.

Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.