There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped.

It was a cold day but the sun was out and the trees were like great bonfires against gray distant fields and hills.

The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men.

Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.

It might be that women who have beennurses should not marry physicians. They have too much respect for physicians, are taughtto have too much respect

From the place by the railing at the edge of the tracks on the summer evening I return across the city to my own room. I am vividly aware of my own life that escaped the winter on the boat. How many such lives I have lived. Then I only made a dollar and a half a day and now I sometimes make more than that in a few minutes. How wonderful to be able to write words. ... Again I begin the endless game of reconstructing my own life, jerking it out of the shell that dies, striving to breathe into it beauty and meaning. ... I wonder why my life, why all lives, are not more beautiful.

The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.