You have been my friends. That in itself is a tremendous thing.

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.

By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is unconfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers tempramentally do not crave comfort and convenience - if they did they would live elsewhere.

Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning.

I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they

We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.

Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.