A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.
You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget.
I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie.
I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out.
I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.
The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take, hours spent in a field where I was not a natural.
I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.
I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.
All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.
I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.
All politicians should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected.
I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago.
I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.
Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.
I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.
I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.
Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.
Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.
