Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.

Every great change is simple.

America, my country, is almost a continent and hardly yet a nation.

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.

Artists are the antennae of the race.