I would especially like to recourt the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Old age treats freelance writers pretty gently.

A house, having been willfully purchased and furnished, tells us more than a body, and its description is a foremost resource of the art of fiction.

He had a sensation of anxiety and shame, a sensitivity acute beyond usefulness, as if the nervous system, flayed of its old hide of social usage, must record every touch of pain.