My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.

The man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four" ... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness.

The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

I hardly know what I'm going to write - an article, a story, a poem in free verse - or in some regular form. I only know that when I have the first sentence. And when the first sentence makes a kind of pattern, then I find out the kind of rhythm I'm looking for.

When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.

The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.

Your unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor.