... beauty, like ecstasy, has always been hostile to the commonplace. And the commonplace, under its popular label of the normal,has been the supreme authority for Homo sapiens since the days when he was probably arboreal.

Tilling the fertile soil of man's vanity.

It seems to me that this is the true test for poetry: - that it should go beneath experience, as prose can never do, and awaken an apprehension of things we have never, and can never, know in the actuality.

The only natural human beings seem to be those who are making trouble.

A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.

America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind.

for my own purpose, I defined the art of fiction as experience illuminated.