Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspect... they differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Americans living in England are remarkably consistent in their reactions to the English. Most of them are hurt and puzzled because... they were brought up on American neighboring patterns and don't interpret the English ones correctly. In England propinquity means nothing. The fact that you live next door to a family does not entitle you to visit, borrow from, or socialize with them, or your children to play with theirs.... To the best of my knowledge, those who have tried to relate to the English purely on the basis of propinquity seldom if ever succeed. They may get to know and even like their neighbors, but it won't be because they live next door, because English relationships are patterned not according to space but according to social status.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why is it that writers, who by definition operate by the use of their imaginations, are given so little credit for it: we "make th...ings up." This is our trade. I remember, before I myself attempted this genre of space fiction, reading an agreeable tale about a species of highly intelligent giraffes who travelled by spaceship from their solar system to ours, to ask if our sun was behaving cruelly to us as theirs had recently taken to doing to them. I remember saying to myself: Well, at least the writer of this tale is not likely to get industrious letters asking what it is like to be a giraffe in a spaceship.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about colored women, and if colored men get their rig...hts, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I'm for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, o...r on virtue, as you wish.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Did you know, Putnam, that more murders are committed at 92 Fahrenheit than any other temperature? I read an article once. Lower t...emperatures, people are easygoing. Over 92, it's too hot to move. But just 92, people get irritable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »