“It is madness to attempt to hold. In the first place the troops cannot do it and in the second place if they do not retreat they will be destroyed. I repeat that this order be rescinded or that you find someone else.”

“I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.”

“Not a single thing do I remember from the first trip but this: the sense of the place, the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or else is not a place…there it is as big as life, the genie-soul of the place which, wherever you go, you must meet and master first thing or be met and mastered.”

“To me "where the wild things are" is a place that exists in our minds; it's a place of liberty and shamelessness. It can take a split second or a lifetime to find it, but once you do, you'll be free.”

“To me where the wild things are is a place that exists in our minds; it's a place of liberty and shamelessness. It can take a split second or a lifetime to find it, but once you do, you'll be free.”

“Reading someone else's newspaper is like sleeping with someone else's wife. Nothing seems to be precisely in the right place, and when you find what you are looking for, it is not clear then how to respond to it.”

“Speaking of New York as a traveller I have two faults to find with it. In the first place there is nothing to see; and in the second place there is no mode of getting about to see anything.”

“Love is when you give someone else the power to destroy you, and you trust them not to do it.”

“…in the first place, self decapitation is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt; and, in the second, it’s suicide, and suicide is a capital offence.”

“For abundant freedom will be achieved only when the body is destroyed, and the soul is placed first before everything else.”