To see Stephen Spender fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.

Free as air; that's what they say- "free as air". Now they bring me my air in an iron barrel.

O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

To understand all is to forgive all.

Of children as of procreation -- the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable

Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.