So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be.

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother's always a Democrat.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

They would not find me changed from him they knew - only more sure of all I thought was true.

Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take-and took.

I was under twenty when I deliberately put it to myself one night after good conversation that there are moments when we actually touch in talk what the best writing can only come near. The curse of our book language is not so much that it keeps forever to the same set phrases . . . but that it sounds forever with the same reading tones. We must go out into the vernacular for tones that haven't been brought to book.