The word itself has another color. It’s not a word with any resonance, although the e was once pronounced. There is only the bump now between b and l, the relief at the end, the whew. It hasn’t the sly turn which crimson takes halfway through, yellow’s deceptive jelly, or the rolled-down sound in brown. It hasn’t violet’s rapid sexual shudder or like a rough road the irregularity of ultramarine, the low puddle in mauve like a pancake covered in cream, the disapproving purse to pink, the assertive brevity of red, the whine of green.

Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.

Words [are] more beautiful than a found fall leaf.

If death itself were to die, would it have a ghost, and would the ghost of death visit the dead in the guise of someone alive, if only to fright them from any temptation to return?

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

I usually have poor to absent relations with editors because they have a habit of desiring changes and I resist changes.