The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.
As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly and unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost.
Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
Old age is a special problem for me because I’ve never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself – a lad of about 19.
Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.
The whole problem is to establish communication with ones self.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.
Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
Don’t write about Man; write about a man.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
The best writing is rewriting.
I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.
A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.