“Poets are interested primarily in death and commas. ”

“It's interesting how young poets think of death while old fogies think of girls.”

“Commas: commas for everyone!”

“The Gospel writers are not really interested primarily in the facts of the birth but in the significance, the meaning for them of that birth just as the people who love us are not really interested primarily in the facts of our births but in what it meant to them when we were born and how for them the world was never the same again, how their whole lives were changed with new significance.”

“A mans life is interesting primarily when he has failed. I well know. For its a sign that he tried to surpass himself.”

“Reading is primarily a symptom. Of a healthy imagination, of our interest in this and other worlds, of our ability to be still and quiet, of our ability to dream during daylight.”