Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.

Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.

I 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.

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.

Laws aren't ghosts in this country, they walk around with the smell of earth on them.

How can you respect the world when you see it's being run by a bunch of kids turned old?

It's great to have an enemy. Sharpens your senses.