If a person sings quietly to himself on the street people smile with approval; but if he talks it's not alright; they think he's crazy. The singer is presumed to be happy and the talker unhappy.

There are two kinds of writers: hustlers and sanctimonious hustlers.

There aren't many irritations to match the condescension which a woman metes out to a man who she believes has loved her vainly for the past umpteen years.

There is a time of life somewhere between the sullen fugues of adolescence and the retrenchments of middle age when human nature becomes so absolutely absorbing one wants to be in the city constantly, even at the height of summer.

If a person sings quietly to himself on the street people smile with approval; but if he talks it's not alright; they think he's crazy. The singer is presumed to be happy and the talker unhappy.

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

Indeed, if "biology is chemistry with history," as somebody has said, then nature writing is biology with love.