“Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.”

“In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.”

“Old age takes away from us what we have inherited and gives us what we have earned.”

“Poets and painters are outside the class system or rather they constitute a special class of their own like the circus people and the gypsies.”

“It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.”

“Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.”

“Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.”

“Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to ...”

“They say that it is always poets that die in wars, and I never got over a sense of being in the trenches.”

“Im not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. Ive seen a chunk of the universe, true, but theres still so much more to see. I doubt Ill ever cure t...”

“My hope, my heaven, my trust must be,My gentle guide, in following thee.”

“Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmonious...”