This is the gift all writers seek-to write language that incandesces yet does not melt.

We all think were going to be great and we feel a little bit robbed when our expectation aren't met, but sometimes our expectations sell us short. Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.

Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their hieroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to the thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality.

Books are islands in the ocean of time. They are also oases in the deserts of time.

Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.

What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation.

I can speak of my own criterion for judging whether or not a book is good or bad. I ask of it a single question, From how deep and true an impulse did it spring? Was it written merely to shock? Only to make money? Or was it written to create something more perfect and more lasting than the life experience from which it came?