Let the radiance of my enthusiasms envelop the poor courtyard and the bare classroom. Let my heart be a stronger column and my goodwill purer gold than the columns and gold of rich schools.

Many things can wait. Children cannot. Today their bones are being formed, their blood is being made, their senses are being developed. To them we cannot say "tomorrow." Their name is today.

You shall create beauty not to excite the senses but to give sustenance to the soul.

Love beauty it is the shadow of God on the universe

Speech is our second possession, after the soul-and perhaps we have no other possession in this world.

Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves best.

What the soul is to the body, so is the artist to his people.

The poet is an untier of knots, and love without words is a knot, and it drowns.

There is the joy of being healthy and fair, but there is overall the beauty, the immense joy of being useful.

Let the earth look at me, and bless me, for now I am fecund and sacred, like the palms and the furrows.

I have all that I lost and I go carrying my childhood like a favorite flower that perfumes my hand.

Being dead wasn't supposed to hurt. Where was the fairness in that? If I was dead, the least the universe could do was make it painless

Ms. Fang is the nicest, sweetest teacher at Scary School. She only ate twelve kids last year.

There is no peace without power.

I sometimes wonder if the manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

The draft is a crapshoot, so I've been very fortunate to be drafted by the Yankees, and to have spent my whole career here.

The life of nature we must meet halfway; it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background. We must be initiated; it is an order the secrets of which are well guarded.

Art changed my life. I mean, I would say art saved me. I believe that it made me better at handling my life.

Women all want to be ladies, which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what.

In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write.

In order to be one of the greats, you've got to study the greats.