A writer is a reader moved to emulation.

I am more stupid about some things than others; not equally stupid in all directions; I am not a well-rounded person.

It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.

The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.

The sand swallows burst out of their scupper holes in the bluffs and out over the transparent drown of the water, back again to the white, to the brown, to the black, from moving to stock-still sand waves and water-worked woods and roots that hugged and twisted in the sun.

In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.

Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.