The novelist screws up his courage in order to invest another two or three years in another attempt to float a boat of original design upon an invented ocean.

We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.

Poetry is engendered in solitude, so what better meter for it than the clip of a buckskin horse?

The novelist screws up his courage in order to invest another two or three years in another attempt to float a boat of original design upon an invented ocean.

No birdcall is the musical equal of a clarinet blown with panache.

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and smile.

Summer is when we believe, all of a sudden, that if we just walked out the back door and kept on going long enough and far enough we would reach the Rocky Mountains.