New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!

Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who knows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised.

When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.

There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.

The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.

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.