Something sinister in the tone Told me my secret must be known: Word I was in the house alone Somehow must have gotten abroad, Word I was in my life alone, Word I had no one left but God.

All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?

When I see birches bend to left and right... I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

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.