The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.

As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.

The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.

No one in this country has any root anywhere; we don't live in America, we board here, we are like spiders that run over the surface of the water.

Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.

Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.