A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

Humor is like a frog. You can dissect it to see how it works, but by then, it's dead.

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.

Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.

Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.

The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.

We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life's routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse , and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.