“It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is …
I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer …
Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and …
The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life. –Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939-August 30, 2013) In memory of the Irish poet and Nobel laureate. Read the obituary in The Irish Times.
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. –Herman Melville “Call me Ishmael.” They may be the most famous opening words of any English-language novel, but read just a little bit further into Moby-Dick and you’ll be …
“A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, …
“Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air’s salubrity.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.” –Alexander Pope (1688-1744) From “An Essay on Criticism”
“She brought you forth out of the cloud of genetics and fed and clothed you and taught you to wipe yourself and say Please and Thank you and never expected you to pay her back, only that you behave appropriately …
by e. e. cummings O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee , has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty . how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing …