We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

The difficulty is, all swing thoughts decay, like radium. What burnt up the course on Wednesday has turned to lead on Sunday. Yet it does not do to have a blank mind: the terrible hugeness of the course will rush into the vacuum and the ball will spray like a thing berserk.

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.

An old essay by John Updike begins, 'We live in an era of gratuitous inventions and negative improvements.' That language is general and abstract, near the top of the ladder. It provokes our thinking, but what concrete evidence leads Updike to his conclusion ? The answer is in his second sentence : 'Consider the beer can.' To be even more specific, Updike was complaining that the invention of the pop-top ruined the aesthetic experience of drinking beer. 'Pop-top' and 'beer' are at the bottom of the ladder, 'aesthetic experience' at the top.

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad, hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.

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