“It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.”

With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

Do not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.

Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.

One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

Poetry is life distilled.

Reading is important – read between the lines. Don’t swallow everything.

Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.

I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.

I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we’re here and we’re healthy.

I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.

It is brave to be involved.

Sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.

You stand on dead men’s legs. You’ve never had any of your own. You couldn’t walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly.

The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.

The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it.

Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.

You never know what life means till you die; even throughout life, tis death that makes life live.

A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.

Death is an equall doome To good and bad, the common In of rest.

Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.