It’s spring! Farewell To chills and colds! The blushing, girlish World unfolds Each flower, leaf And blade of sod— Small letters sent To her from God.

A photograph presents itself not only as a visual representation, but as evidence, more convincing than a painting because of the unimpeachable mechanical means whereby it was made. We do not trust the artist's flattering hand; but we do trust film, and shadows, and light.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it.

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.

A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

In memory's telephoto lens, far objects are magnified.