The young writer should learn to spot them: words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning, but that soon burst in the air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.

I always write a thing first and think about it afterward, which is not a bad procedure because the easiest way to have consequential thoughts is to start putting them down.

Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.

We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.

Even now; with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.

Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.

If sometimes there seems to be a sort of sameness of sound in The New Yorker, it probably can be traced to the magazine's copydesk, which is a marvelous fortress of grammatical exactitude and stylish convention.