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

It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn't catch the remark because I wasn't paying attention.

A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.

Much of our adult morality, in books and out of them, has a stuffiness unworthy of childhood. Our grown-up conclusions often rest on perilously soft bottom.

I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen.