It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from chrysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever.

We could live offa the fatta the lan'.

I know a little bit about a great many things and not enough about any one to make a living in these times.

There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.

Why do men like me want sons? he wondered. It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.

A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style.