Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and just roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject.

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.

Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called "prophylaxis" in New York.

Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

"Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?" "Yes. A drink."

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