The water is clearer than the air, and the air is the air that angels breathe.

Whatever you have lived, you can write & by hard work & a genuine apprenticeship, you can learn to write well; but what you have not lived you cannot write, you can only pretend to write it.

No child should be permitted to grow up without exercise for imagination. It enriches life for him. It makes things wonderful and beautiful.

But they (the infantry) had no use for boys of twelve and thirteen, and before I had a chance in another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.