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.

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

There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.