Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures.

God's creature is one. He makes man, not men. His true creature is unitary and infinite, revealing himself, indeed, in every finite form, but compromised by none.

New York is appalling, fantastically charmless and elaborately dire.

The artist beholds in nature more than she herself Nature is conscious of.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete

Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.

Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.