“Wit has truth in it wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”

“MenThey hail you as their morning starBecause you are the way you are.If you return the sentiment,They'll try to make you different;And once they have you, safe and sound,They want to change you all around.Your moods and ways they put a curse on;They'd make of you another person.They cannot let you go your gait;They influence and educate.They'd alter all that they admired.They make me sick, they make me tired.”

“She realizes she doesn't know as much as God but feels she knows as much as God knew when he was her age.”

“You think You're frightening me with Your hell, don't You? You think Your hell is worse than mine.”

“Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching.”

“This level reach of blue is not my sea; Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,Whose quiet ripples meet obediently A marked and measured line, one after one. This is no sea of mine. that humbly laves Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm. I have a need of wilder, crueler waves; They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm. So let a love beat over me again, Loosing its million desperate breakers wide; Sudden and terrible to rise and wane; Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide That casts upon the heart, as it recedes, Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds.”

“I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.”

“Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,Painter or plumber or never-do-well,Do me a favor and shut your face -Poets alone should kiss and tell.”

“There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.”

“Little WordsWhen you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;And I can only stare, and shape my griefIn little words.I cannot conjure loveliness, to drownThe bitter woe that racks my cords apart.The weary pen that sets my sorrow downFeeds at my heart.There is no mercy in the shifting year,No beauty wraps me tenderly about.I turn to little words- so you, my dear,Can spell them out.”

“I like to have a martini,Two at the very most.After three I'm under the table,after four I'm under my host.”