All art, in spite of the struggles of some critics to prove otherwise, is based on emotion and projects emotion.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

The art of one period cannot be approached through the attitudes (emotional or intellectual) of another.

At midnight tears Run into your ears.

... how much of our inner substance is it good for us to give to public griefs? The whole modern tendency to agonize over the suffering of the entire globe is surely something new.

The fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross with hair-line precision.

Up from the bronze, I saw Water without a flaw Rush to its rest in air Reach to its rest, and fall.