Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.

The successful truck gardener can never go out to dinner in the summer or spend a week end away, because his conscience tells him he has to be at home eating up his corn or packaging his beans for the freezer.

Cocktail parties ... are usually not parties at all but mass ceremonials designed to clear up at one great stroke a wealth of obligations.

Scratch any father, you find / Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, / Believing change is a threat.

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

Sons do not need you. They are always out of your reach, Walking strange waters.

Kindness is a virtue neither modern nor urban. One almost unlearns it in a city. Towns have their own beatitude; they are not unfriendly; they offer a vast and solacing anonymity or an equally vast and solacing gregariousness. But one needs a neighbor on whom to practice compassion.