The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.

Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.

I discovered a long time ago that writing of the small things of the day, the trivial matters of the heart, the inconsequential but near things of this living, was the only kind of creative work which I could accomplish with any sincerity or grace. As a reporter, I was a flop, because I always came back laden not with facts about the case, but with a mind full of the little difficulties and amusements I had encountered in my travels.

You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.

New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.

Extreme cold when it first arrives seems to generate cheerfulness and sociability. For a few hours all life's dubious problems are dropped in favor of the clear and congenial task of keeping alive.