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

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.

Tears were a blessing; they were a relief; they did wash the ache from the heart, ease brain strain, and encourage the soul.

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.

You cannot write on the heart of another what you do not feel yourself.

The world is full of happy people but no one ever hears of them. You have to fight and make a scandal to get in the papers. No one knows about all the happy people.

Sometimes it seems to me that the more we get hurt in this world the decenter it makes us.