The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts -the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria -are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.

Perhaps Samuel Johnson was a great man; he was certainly a drumbling one.

Every decision you make is a mistake.

We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain.

One cat in a house is a sign of loneliness.

I know sage, wormwood, and hyssop, but I can't smell character unless it stinks.

Look at this poet William Carlos Williams: he is primitive and native, and his roots are in raw forest and violent places; he is word-sick and place-crazy. He admires strength, but for what? Violence! This is the cult of the frontier mind.