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.

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.

Don Marquis came down after a month on the wagon, ambled over to the bar, and announced, 'I've conquered that goddamn willpower of mine. Gimme a double Scotch.

The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.

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

Walden is the only book I own, although there are some others unclaimed on my shelves. Every man, I think, reads one book in his life, and this is mine. It is not the best book I ever encountered, perhaps, but it is for me the handiest, and I keep it about me in much the same way one carries a handkerchief - for relief in moments of defluxion or despair.

Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.