I located America thirty-one years ago in a Model T Ford and planted my flag. I’ve tried a couple of times since to find it again, riding in faster cars and on better roads, but America is the sort of place that is discovered only once by any one man.
Its not often a true friend comes around.
I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.
Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.
In a man’s middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.
Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly.
Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.
Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
No matter what changes take place in the world, or in me, nothing ever seems to disturb the face of spring.
Half a man’s life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.
Once in everyone’s life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half-asleep.