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

“Be obscure clearly.”

“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.”

“I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.”

“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.”

“A schoolchild should be taught grammar--for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.”

“Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.”