“Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past”

“I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.”

“I could write an epic poem about your thighs.”“That would amuse polite society rather too much, and I wouldn’t like that.”“I wouldn’t either.” She pressed her cheek to his belly. “I can’t think of a word to rhyme with marble column.”

“I wanted to mend the entire world all at once, but in such longings found that I'd already caused too much harm.”

“He could write an epic poem about her ass. And all the ways he wanted to defile it.”

“Books are the best type of influence of the past...Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.”