I don't so much mind the falling, but I do seem to select the hardest spots to light on.

the occasional cries of a lost loon, strayed from its flock in northern migration, fill the swamp with sounds of wailing.

What you are lies with you. If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose, among the only ones who live beyond the grave in this world, the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures, and work for others. Never mind the calico dress, and the coarse shoes. Work at you books, and before long you will hear yesterday's tormentors boasting that they were once classmates of yours.

we know by the odour that occasionally we are visited by skunks, which are not poetic but very beautiful.

How a big majority of book critics and authors have come to believe and to teach that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life, God knows.

My publishers will make any kind of a beautiful book I design and send in to them, but ... For poetry they have less use than a rooster would have for skates.

I do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them.