The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well.

No one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry.

What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?

The word happiness exists in every language; it is plausible the thing itself exists.

You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.

What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style.