Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.

I'm so tired of hearing about 'Renascence,' I'm nearly dead. I find it's as hard to live down an early triumph as an early indiscretion.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

Music my rampart, and my only one.

Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world - it is thin.

It is high time we found out about this man Cummings. Let us give him every opportunity to show us at once whether he is a genius, a charlatan, or a congenital defective - and get him off our minds.

Some of us have been thinking and talking too long without doing anything. Poems are perfect; picketing, sometimes, is better.

I've written so many verses and keep on writing so many more that I became afraid that if I didn't write them into one big book, I might forget some of them.

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does.

The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.

My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - it gives a lovely light!

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

Not truth, but faith, it is that keeps the world alive.

My god is all gods in one. When I see a beautiful sunset, I worship the god of Nature; when I see a hidden action brought to light, I worship the god of Truth; when I see a bad man punished and a good man go free, I worship the god of Justice; when I see a penitent forgiven, I worship the god of Mercy.

I went to Boston fully expecting to be arrested - arrested by a polizia created by a government that my ancestors rebelled to establish.

Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through.

God, I can push the grass apart and lay my finger on Thy heart.

Beauty is whatever gives joy.

I see things with my own eyes, just as if they were the first eyes that ever saw, and then I set about to tell, as best I can, just what I've seen.