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.
John UpdikeI moved to New England partly because it has a real literary past. The ghosts of Hawthorne and Melville still sit on those green hills. The worship of Mammon is also somewhat lessened there by the spirit of irony. I don't get hay fever in New England either.
John Updike