When you publish something, it is very much as if you pulled your pants down in public. If what you have written is good, nobody can hurt you; if what you have written is bad, nobody can help you.
Strange how few, After alls said and done, the things that are Of moment.
We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace.
I hate people but I love gatherings.
I screamed, and – lo! – Infinity Came down and settled over me.
Although we sometimes did without a few of life’s necessities, we rarely lacked for its luxuries.
The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.
No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.
Guess I’ll weep awhile. Guess I won’t, I mean.
A Poem from Edna St. Vincent Millay: Grown-up Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half-past eight?
Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I!
This book, when I am dead, will be A little faint perfume of me. People who knew me well will say, She really used to think that way.
There is no God. But it does not matter. Man is enough.
A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.
But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home to a leaky castle across the sea to lie awake in linen smelling of lavender, and hear the nightingale, and long for me.
I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, and present, and forevermore.
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine.
And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea.
My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I’ll not be knowing, Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, No matter where it’s going.
A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.