One of the things that I discovered in lecturing was that gradually one ceased to hear what one said one heard what the audience hears one say.
I don’t envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not.
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes American what it is.
Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying.
Writer or painter god-parents are notoriously unreliable. That is, there is certain before long to be a cooling of friendship.
Even the propagandists on the radio find it very difficult to really say let alone believe that the world will be a happy place, of love and peace and plenty, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb and everybody will believe anybody.
Suppose no one asked a question. What would the answer be?
A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.
A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.
Nothing has happened today except kindness.
I like a thing simple but it must be simple through complication. Everything must come into your scheme, otherwise you cannot achieve real simplicity.
Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.
It is inevitable when one has a great need of something one finds it. What you need you attract like a lover.
I have been the creative literary mind of the century.
Forget grammar and think about potatoes.
Animals in different countries have different expressions just as the people in different countries differ in expression.
You cannot go into the womb to form the child; it is there and makes itself and comes forth whole-and there it is and you have made it and have felt it, but it has come itself.
The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant sees it.
I certainly do care for you Jeff Campbell less than you are always thinking and much more than you are ever knowing.
One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.