When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. That's my middle-west - not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow.

The helpless ecstasy of loosing himself in her charm was a powerful opiate rather than a tonic.

Rosemary felt that this swim would become the typical one of her life, the one that would always pop up in her memory at the mention of swimming.

The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

You can stroke people with words.

I am too much a moralist at heart, and really want to preach at people in some acceptable form, rather than entertain them.

Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.