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

If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.

Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young man's courting It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom

'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn!

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.

America is a lunatic asylum.