Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
When snow accumulates week after week, month after month, it works curious miracles.
There is a decivilizing bug somewhere at work; unconsciously persons of stern worth, by not resenting and resisting the small indignities of the times, are preparing themselves for the eventual acceptance of what they themselves know they don’t want.
You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.
When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.
Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
When you consider that there are a thousand ways to express even the simplest idea, it is no wonder writers are under a great strain. Writers care greatly how a thing is said – it makes all the difference. So they are constantly faced with too many choices and must make too many decisions.
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have your question answered.
Salutations; it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning.
The most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler.
Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called “prophylaxis” in New York.
The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.
America is now liberty-conscious. In a single generation it has progressed from being toothbrush-conscious, to being air-minded, to being liberty-conscious.
The bonus is really one of the great give-aways in business enterprise. It is the annual salve applied to the conscience of the rich and the wounds of the poor.
Familiarity is the thing-the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness.
In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.
Television will enormously enlarge the eye’s range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.
New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.