I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

An American in London...cannot but be impressed and charmed by the city. The momumentality of Washington, the thriving business of New York, the antique intimacy of Boston, plus a certain spacious and open feeling reminiscent of Denver and San Francisco-all these he finds combined for his pleasure.

It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.

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

The breezes taste Of apple peel. The air is full Of smells to feel- Ripe fruit, old footballs, Burning brush, New books, erasers, Chalk, and such. The bee, his hive, Well-honeyed hum, And Mother cuts Chrysanthemums. Like plates washed clean With suds, the days Are polished with A morning haze.

Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that Mankind has invented yet.

Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.