In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.

A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.

Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.

New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.

I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.