We hope the 'real' person behind the words will be revealed as ignominiously as a shapeless snail without its shapely shell.

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.

I secretly understood: the primitive appeal of the hearth. Television is-its irresistible charm-a fire.