His mother understood my illness immediately, that it was my world rather than myself that was diseased.

I am an atheist (or at best a Unitarian who winds up in church quite a lot).

Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.

You know, I think the main purpose of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is to get poor Americans into clean, pressed, unpatched clothes, so rich Americans can stand to look at them.

You don't do art for any other reason than to help your soul grow.

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.