“Be obscure clearly.”

“Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.”

“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.”

“Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north...As he peeked ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.”

“It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people.”

“Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.”

“There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.”