There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.
The siren south is well enough, but New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss – a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye.
Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.
Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider’s web?
Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.
Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.
Humor is like a frog. You can dissect it to see how it works, but by then, it’s dead.
I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend – to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.
There is a period near the beginning of every man’s life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.
It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible.
Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.
Computing machines perhaps can do the work of a dozen ordinary men, but there is no machine that can do the work of one extraordinary man.
From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.
His words span rivers and mountains, but his thoughts are still only six inches long.
When a man hangs from a tree it doesn’t spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations.
An unhatched egg is to me the greatest challenge in life.
Commuter – one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again.
It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.