“There is nothing so expensive, really, as a big, well-developed, full-bodied preconception.”

“The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way; for when you read in the papers the interminable discussions and the bickering and the prognostications and the turmoil, the disagreements and the fateful decisions and agreements and the plans and the programs and the threats and the counter threats, then you close your eyes and the sea dispatches one more big roller in the unbroken line since the beginning of the world and it combs and breaks and returns foaming and saying: "So soon?" E. B. White "On A Florida Key”

“To confront death, in any guise, is to identify with the victim and face what is unsettling and sobering”

“At this season of the year, darkness is a more insistent thing than cold. The days are short as any dream.”

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.”

“The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.”

“New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.”

“Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp - everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.”

“New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up”

“The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.”

“new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.”