The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.

Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half-asleep.

Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. 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.

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.

It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn't catch the remark because I wasn't paying attention.