“Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.”

“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”

“Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about people in the past are a form of injustice.”

“Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.”

“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game and do it by watching first some high-school or small-town teams”

“What we ask of a writer in the first place is a unique voice. We ask for the rest later, and we may even pretend that it is only the later things we required -- no personal, individual, induplicabl...”

“There are loads of actresses that modelled. They just weren't famous. There weren't a lot that were really known as models that became actresses, but there are hordes of them that did modelling bef...”

“Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.”

“Fling but a stone, the giant dies.”

“I rise with every sunrise.”

“To pursue science is not to disparage the things of the spirit. In fact, to pursue science rightly is to furnish the framework on which the spirit may rise.”

“A nation will rise no higher than the strength of its homes.”

“The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.”

“A heart pulsating in harmony with the circulation of sap and the flow of rivers? A body with the rhythms of the earth in its movements? No. Instead: a mind, shut off from the oxygen of alert senses...”

“Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be their nature.- Yes; it's a funny habit.- No, it's not funny; you are wrong there. There's nothing funny in nature, howe...”