I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful.

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.

Do I dare disturb the universe?

Old men ought to be explorers.

So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.

It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London.