"I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."

"The best writing is rewriting."

"But real life is only one kind of life—there is also the life of the imagination."

"The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines."

"English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street."

"Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone."

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time."

"Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him."

"Meetings bore me."

"Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?"... "Yes. A drink"

"When an American family becomes separated from its toothbrushes and combs and pajamas for a few hours it considers that it has had quite an adventure."

"Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch."

"An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write."

"A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm."

"Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half-asleep."

"Everything in life is somewhere else and you get there in a car."

"New york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing."

"I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else"

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.... No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

"Most people believe almost anything they see in print."

"Good things come to those who find it and shove it in their mouth!"

"I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow."

"It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression."

"The night seemed long. Wilbur's stomach was empty and his mind was full. And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's always hard to sleep."

"Remember that writing is translation, and the opus to be translated is yourself."

"A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring."

"A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom-he fears a drunken poet may crack a joke that will take hold."

"Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts."

"The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything"

"It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

"Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning."

"Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people-- people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

"To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. "The Distant Music of the Hounds," 1954"

"By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience- if they did they would live elsewhere."

"I am working on a new book about a boa constrictor and a litter of hyenas. The boa constrictor swallows the babies one by one, and the mother hyena dies laughing."

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world."

"Life's accumulation is more discouraging than life itself, when stirred up."

"I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat."

"The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it."

"He was sad because his new friend was so bloodthirsty."

"Very fine law,” said Stuart. “When I am Chairman, anybody who is mean to anybody else is going to catch it."

"I remember what it is like to be in love before any of love’s complexities or realities or disturbances has entered in, to dilute its splendor and challenge its perfection."

"I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema, there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles."

"(Not every doctor can look into a mouse's ear without laughing)"

"She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writers. Charlotte was both."

"As everyone knows, there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying"

"[Writers] should tend to lift people up, not lower them down."

"New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up"

"Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place."

"When your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it’s always hard to sleep."