Not even a collapsing world looks dark to a man who is about to make his fortune.

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

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.

Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

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.

I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go.

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.