People permit life to slide past them like a deft pickpocket, their purse-not yet missed and now too late-in his hand.

A stricken tree, a living thing, so beautiful, so dignified, so admirable in its potential longevity, is, next to man, perhaps the most touching of wounded objects.

Your idea of bliss is to wake up on a Monday morning knowing you haven't a single engagement for the entire week. You are cradled in a white paper cocoon tied up with typewriter ribbon.

Christmas is not a season. It is a feeling.

A closed mind is a dying mind.

The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possible.

I suppose it is a gift, being young, but it isn't special. We've all got it, early in life.