Oh, I never look under the hood.

The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.

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

When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.

There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. 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 poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.