You are not male nor female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.

As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

Your thorns are the best part of you.

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.

Camels are snobbish and sheep, unintelligent; water buffaloes, neurasthenic-- even murderous. Reindeer seem over-serious.

Omissions are not accidents.

The hands are the heart's messengers.

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.

When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.

I wish you a joyful time at Christmas and throughout the New Year.

I think comics have far more potential than a lot of people realize.

Photographers deal in things which are continuously vanishing.

In the Middle Ages, everything bad was the work of the devil, everything good, the work of God. Today, the French see everything in reverse and blame the Germans for it.

Everyone's projecting onto you, or you feel like everyone is judging you. I feel like I'm being judged a lot of the time. You become really self-conscious.

Good translations are one of the vital necessities of our time.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel can seize.

Above all things-read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied.

You always want what you can’t have.