If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good.

The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.

It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.

To break the pentameter, that was the first heave

Any damn fool can be spontaneous.

Bureaucrats are a pox. They are supposed to be necessary. Certain chemicals in the body are supposed to be necessary to life, but cause death the moment they increase beyond a suitable limit

small talk comes from small bones