Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations.

Security, for me, took a tumble not when I read that there were Communists in Hollywood but when I read your editorial in praise of loyalty testing and thought control. If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going.

Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.

By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.

As in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading-the writer, who is the impregnator, and the reader, who is the resspondent. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.

Too many things on my mind, said Wilbur. Well, said the goose, that's not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I've too many things under my behind.

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.