"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."

"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."

"Don't try to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

"The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."

"The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews."

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."

"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable."

"I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, ``Get the hell off my property.''"

"I have failed many times, and that's why I am a success."

"The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental pretense but an idea."

"Conquer thyself, till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own."