Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

The fact that we still live well cannot ease the feeling that we no longer live nobly.

I was made to feel I could do things. If you get this feeling early and can hold it until you're 15, you tend to never lose it.

I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.

Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

Journalism has not only its social stimulations but its aesthetic virtues. An invitation into print, from however suspect a source, is an opportunity to make something beautiful, to discover within oneself a treasure that would otherwise have remained buried.