Poems List

It’s a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.

cartoon caption in New Yorker 27 March 1937

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

cartoon caption in New Yorker 5 June 1937

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You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

‘The Bear Who Let It Alone’ in New Yorker 29 April 1939

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Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.

‘The Shrike and the Chipmunks’ in New Yorker 18 February 1939

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Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

My Life and Hard Times (1933) ch. 2

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Don’t get it right, get it written.
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The word “I’ll” should not be divided so that the “I” is on one line and “ ’ll” on the next. The reader’s attention, after the breaking up of “I’ll,” can never be successfully recaptured.
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Word has somehow got around that the split infinitive is always wrong. That is a piece with the outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady.
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