Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.

Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.

For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.

[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).

But why, why, why can't people just say what they mean?

Endeavor to do what you love so that your work becomes an expression of love to the world

I am the keeper of my husband's history.

It is a choice, and therefore within the province of economics.

Sometimes, all it takes to change your life is to change your routine.

Visualization is daydreaming with a purpose.

There is no journalist without opinions, and there's no real objectivity, but we can strive toward it.

I believe, as they say, that you can't be what you don't see, and since I saw a lot of smart women in my life, education being at the center, I just mimicked that behavior.

Religion is the venereal disease of mankind.

A writer should give direct certainty; explanations are so much water poured into the wine.