“The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs.”

You’re terrific as far as I am concerned.

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer… He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays

It is Sunday, mid-morning-Sunday in the living room, Sunday in the kitchen, Sunday in the woodshed, Sunday down the road in the village: I hear the bells, calling me to share God’s grace.

Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.

Salutations; it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning

Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one’s belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place that is strange, remote.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.

Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.

I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn’t know where else to go.

When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.

Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.

There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.

I shouldn’t have called out Will Ferrell, but I am getting a little fed up with these people.You want to support Bernie Sanders, knock yourself out. Does he know what Bernie stands for? Does he know what Bernie wants? And I submit to you, he doesn’t.

In my heart, I never called one wrong.

Call me patch. I mean it. Call me.

I found out that a person named Elizabeth Frazier was living with AIDS at the time, and so I called her up, and she took a meeting with me.

What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.

This so-called fame or being better off doesn’t really attract me at all.

This so-called contemporary art is not a form, but a philosophy of society.

I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless.