Poets from the United States

"It's broccoli, dear." "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."

"Commuter — one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again."

"I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure."

"Did it ever occur to you that there's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another?"

"Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams — Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword."

"Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma."

"There is a decivilizing bug somewhere at work; unconsciously persons of stern worth, by not resenting and resisting the small indignities of the times, are preparing themselves for the eventual acceptance of what they themselves know they don’t want."

"Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else."

"All poets who, when reading from their own works, experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not."

"Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."

"We received a letter from the Writers' War Board the other day asking for a statement on "The Meaning of Democracy." It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure. Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don't in don't shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles, the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is the letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of the morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is."

"Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it... Where does security lie, anyway — security against the thief, a bad man, the murderer? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in government."

"I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears so much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic."

"Security, for me, took a tumble not when I read that there were Communists in Hollywood but when I read your editorial in praise of loyalty testing and thought control. If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going."

"I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles."

"The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition. All dwellers in cities must dwell with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer who might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm."

"No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

"Americans are willing to go to enormous trouble and expense defending their principles with arms, very little trouble and expense advocating them with words. Temperamentally we are ready to die for certain principles (or, in the case of overripe adults, send youngsters to die), but we show little inclination to advertise the reasons for dying."

"When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed."

"Salutations"

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."

"We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny... The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist."

"An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write."

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."

"One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy."

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

"Life's meaning has always eluded me and I guess it always will. But I love it just the same."

"An unhatched egg is to me the greatest challenge in life."

"As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the one thing left to us in a bad time."

"Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed."

"A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist — nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time."

"Ideally, a book of letters should be published posthumously. The advantages are obvious: the editor enjoys a free hand, and the author enjoys a perfect hiding place — the grave, where he is impervious to embarrassments and beyond the reach of libel. I have failed to cooperate with this ideal arrangement. Through some typical bit of mismanagement, I am still alive, and the book has had to adjust to that awkward fact."

"The essayist … can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter — philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast..."

"I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television — of that I am quite sure."

"Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote."

"Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car."

"A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus."

"The future, wave or no wave, seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done."

"Before you can be an internationalist you have first to be a naturalist and feel the ground under you making a whole circle. It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members. A club, moreover, or a nation, has a most attractive offer to make: it offers the right to be exclusive. There are not many of us who are physically constituted to resist this strange delight, this nourishing privilege. It is at the bottom of all fraternities, societies, orders. It is at the bottom of most trouble. The planet holds out no such inducement. The planet is everybody's. All it offers is the grass, the sky, the water, the ineluctable dream of peace and fruition."

"Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me … I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment. I am fortunate indeed to have had the chance to get some of it down on paper."

"I am always humbled by the infinite ingenuity of the lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow."

"A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom — he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold."

"This is the dream we had, asleep in our chair, thinking of Christmas in the lands of fir tree and pine, Christmas in lands of palm tree and vine, and of how the one great sky does for all places and all people. After the third great war was over (this was a curious dream), there was no more than a handful of people left alive, and the earth was in ruins and the ruins were horrible to behold. The people, the survivors, decided to meet to talk over their problem and to make a lasting peace, which is the customary thing to make after a long and exhausting war. There were eighty-three countries, and each country sent a delegate to the convention. One English-man came, one Peruvian, one Ethiopian, one Frenchman, one Japanese, and so on, until every country was represented."

"Each delegate brought the flag of his homeland with him-each, that is, except the delegate from China. When the others asked him why he had failed to bring a flag, he said that he had discussed the matter with another Chinese survivor, an ancient and very wise man, and that between them they had concluded that they would not have any cloth flag for China anymore. 'What kind of flag do you intend to have?' asked the delegate from Luxembourg. The Chinese delegate blinked his eyes and produced a shoebox, from which he drew a living flower which looked very like an iris. 'What is that?' they all inquired, pleased with the sight of so delicate a symbol. 'That,' said the Chinese, 'is a wild flag, Iris tectorum. In China we have decided to adopt this flag, since it is a convenient and universal device and very beautiful and grows everywhere in the moist places of the earth for all to observe and wonder at. I propose all countries adopt it, so that it will be impossible for us to insult each other's flag.'"

"'I don't see how a strong foreign policy can be built around a wild flag which is the same for everybody,' complained the Latvian. 'It can't be,' said the Chinese. 'That is one of the virtues of my little flag. I should remind you that the flag was once yours, too. It is the oldest flag in the world, the original one, you might say. We are now, in an original condition again, you might say. There are very few of us.' The German delegate arose stiffly. 'I would be a poor man indeed,' he said, 'did I not feel that I belonged to the master race. And for that I need a special flag, natürlich.' 'At the moment,' replied the Chinaman, 'the master race, like so many other races, is suffering from the handicap of being virtually extinct. There are fewer than two hundred people left in the entire world, and we suffer from a multiplicity of banner.'"

"The delegate from Patagonia spoke up. 'I fear that the wild flag, one for all, will prove an unpopular idea.' 'It will, undoubtedly,' sighed the Chinese delegate. 'But now that there are only a couple of hundred people on earth, even the word "unpopular" loses most of its meaning. At this juncture we might conceivably act in a sensible, rather than a popular, manner.' And he produced eighty-two more shoeboxes and handed a wild flag to each delegate, bowing ceremoniously. Next day the convention broke up and the delegates returned to their homes, marveling at what they had accomplished in so short a time. And that is the end of our dream."

"In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living."

"New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine."

"Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly."

"Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention."

"When you consider that there are a thousand ways to express even the simplest idea, it is no wonder writers are under a great strain. Writers care greatly how a thing is said — it makes all the difference. So they are constantly faced with too many choices and must make too many decisions. I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go."

"I was deeply impressed by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. It may well be the book by which the human race will stand or fall."

"a wonderful spirit"

"Irrationality is the square root of all evil."

"Which statement seems more true: (1) I have a brain. (2) I am a brain."

"In fact, a sense of essence is, in essence, the essence of sense, in effect."

"The nice thing about having a brain is that one can learn, that ignorance can be supplanted by knowledge, and that small bits of knowledge can gradually pile up into substantial heaps."

"Solomon: Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence. Hofstadter: I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me. Solomon: So fix it. Hofstadter: The next day someone will fix it back."

"If the meanings of true and false were switched, this sentence wouldn't be false."

"I am not shooting at immortality through my books, no. Nor do I think Chopin was shooting at immortality through his music. That strikes me as a very selfish goal, and I don't think Chopin was particularly selfish. I would also say that I think that music comes much closer to capturing the essence of a composer's soul than do a writer's ideas capture the writer's soul. Perhaps some very emotional ideas that I express in my books can get across a bit of the essence of my soul to some readers, but I think that Chopin's music probably does a lot better job (and the same holds, of course, for many composers). I personally don't have any thoughts about "shooting for immortality" when I write. I try to write simply in order to get ideas out there that I believe in and find fascinating, because I'd like to let other people be able share those ideas. But intellectual ideas alone, no matter how fascinating they are, are not enough to transmit a soul across brains. Perhaps, as I say, my autobiographical passages — at least some of them — get tiny shards of my soul across to some people. But such autobiographical story-telling is not nearly as effective a means of soul-transmission as is living with someone you love for many years of your lives, and sharing profound life goals with them — that's for sure!"

"The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through levels of some hierarchial system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started."

"The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion."

"Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism. … Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories … human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon—which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least."

"Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system, no matter how powerful—cannot lead to all truths."

"Below Every Tangled Hierarchy Lies An Inviolate Level"

"No reference is truly direct—every reference depends on some kind of coding scheme. It's just a question of how implicit it is."

"One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over. It might seem, then, that all efforts to explain Zen are complete wastes of time. But that is not the attitude of Zen masters and students. For instance, Zen koans are a central part of Zen study, verbal though they are. Koans are supposed to be "triggers" which, though they do not contain enough information in themselves to impart enlightenment, may possibly be sufficient to unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that lead to enlightenment. But in general, the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth."

"This type of paradox is quite characteristic of Zen. It is an attempt to "break the mind of logic"."

"Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."

"Reality includes creating every real connection and reference."

"Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places."

"I'm beginning to lose patience With my personal relations: They are not deep, And they are not cheap."

"The sky is darkening like a stain, Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers."

"Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The Hunter's waking thoughts."

"I see it often since you’ve been away: The island, the veranda, and the fruit; The tiny steamer breaking from the bay; The literary mornings with its hoot; Our ugly comic servant; and then you, Lovely and willing every afternoon."

"At the far end of the enormous room An orchestra is playing to the rich."

"This is the Night Mail crossing the Border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order,Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner, the girl next door.Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: The gradient's against her, but she’s on time.Past cotton-grass and moorland border, Shovelling white steam over her shoulder."

"Letters of thanks, letters from banks, Letters of joy from girl and boy, Receipted bills and invitations To inspect new stock or to visit relations, And applications for situations, And timid lovers' declarations, And gossip, gossip from all the nations."

"Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one."

"Every day America's destroyed and re-created, America is what you do, America is I and you, America is what you choose to make it."

"In a garden shady this holy lady With reverent cadence and subtle psalm, Like a black swan as death came on Poured forth her song in perfect calm: And by ocean’s margin this innocent virgin Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer, And notes tremendous from her great engine Thundered out on the Roman air.Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited, Moved to delight by the melody, White as an orchid she rode quite naked In an oyster shell on top of the sea."

"Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions To all musicians, appear and inspire: Translated Daughter, come down and startle Composing mortals with immortal fire."

"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language."

"The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories."

"Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done."

"Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing."

"Though the great artists of the past could not change the course of history, it is only through their work that we are able to break bread with the dead, and without communion with the dead a fully human life is impossible."

"Only in rites can we renounce our oddities and be truly entired."

"Let us honor if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one."

"Put the car away; when life fails What's the good of going to Wales? Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do?"

"If we really want to live, we’d better start at once to try; If we don’t it doesn’t matter, we’d better start to die."

"To ask the hard question is simple, The simple act of the confused will."

"Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all But will his negative inversion, be prodigal: Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch Curing the intolerable neural itch, The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy, And the distortions of ingrown virginity."

"Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart."

"And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie."

"Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead."

"Let the florid music praise, The flute and the trumpet, Beauty’s conquest of your face: In that land of flesh and bone, Where from citadels on high Her imperial standards fly, Let the hot sun Shine on, shine on."

"Look, stranger, on this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea."

"O what is that sound which so thrills the ear Down in the valley drumming, drumming? Only the scarlet soldiers, dear, The soldiers coming."

"O it's broken the lock and splintered the door, O it's the gate where they're turning, turning; Their boots are heavy on the floor And their eyes are burning."

"Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on."

"Cold, impossible, ahead Lifts the mountain's lovely head Whose white waterfall could bless Travellers in their last distress."

"A shilling life will give you all the facts."

"Fish in the unruffled lakes Their swarming colours wear, Swans in the winter air A white perfection have, And the great lion walks Through his innocent grove; Lion, fish and swan Act, and are gone Upon Time's toppling wave."

"We must lose our loves, On each beast and bird that moves Turn an envious look."

"August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier."

"And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss, O show us History the operator, the Organiser, Time the refreshing river." And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life That shapes the individual belly and orders The private nocturnal terror: "Did you not found the city state of the sponge, "Raise the vast military empires of the shark And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton? Intervene, O descend as a dove or A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend.""

"On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe; On that tableland scored by rivers, Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our feverAre precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond To the medicine ad and the brochure of winter cruises Have become invading battalions; And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruinAre projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb. Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom As the ambulance and the sandbag; Our hours of friendship into a people's army."

"To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love, The photographing of ravens; all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome; To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers, The eager election of chairmen By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle."

"The stars are dead. The animals will not look. We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon."

"My head looks an egg upon a plate, My nose is not too bad, but isn’t straight; I have no proper eyebrows, and my eyes Are far too close together to look nice."

"The greater the love, the more false to its object Not to be born is the best for man After the kiss comes the impulse to throttle Break the embraces, dance while you can."

"The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance’s pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down with the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop."

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come."

"He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good."

"Like love we don't know where or why Like love we can't compel or fly Like love we often weep Like love we seldom keep"

"And children swarmed to him like settlers. He became a land."

"Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table."

"The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces."

"As a rule, It was the pleasure-haters who became unjust."

"And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses Itching to boil their children. Only his verses Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working."

"Lay your sleeping head, my love Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral; But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie: Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful."

"Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost."

"About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along."

"They never forgot That even the most dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree."

"The expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."

"I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you Till China and Africa meet And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street.I’ll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky."

"O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you’ve missed.The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea cup opens A lane to the land of the dead."

"Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets."

"Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went."

"Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard."

"He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day."

"By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems."

"When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse."

"Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom."

"You were silly like us: your gift survived it all; The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself; mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its saying where executives Would never want to tamper; it flows south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth."

"Earth, receive an honoured guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry."

"Time that with this strange excuse Pardoned Kipling and his views, And will pardon Paul Claudel, Pardons him for writing well."

"In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate;Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye."

"In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise."

"An important Jew who died in exile."

"To us he is no more a person Now but a whole climate of opinion."

"One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite."

"I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night."

"I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return."

"Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse."

"For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone."

"All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die."

"Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame."

"Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded."

"To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, Is a keen observer of life, The word 'Intellectual' suggests straight away A man who's untrue to his wife."

"At Dirty Dick's and Sloppy Joe's We drank our liquor straight, Some went upstairs with Margery, And some, alas, with Kate."

"My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely."

"Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions...Whole cosmogonies will be created out of some forgotten personal resentment, complete epics written in private languages, the daubs of schoolchildren ranked above the greatest masterpieces. Idealism will be replaced by Materialism. Life after death will be an eternal dinner party where all the guests are 20 years old...Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish...The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Age, when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire."

"Let us then Consider rather the incessant Now of The traveler through time, his tired mind Biased towards bigness since his body must Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope."

"Sob, heavy world, Sob as you spin Mantled in mist, remote from the happy."

"We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die."

"Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city.Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast."

"In a national capital Mirabeau and his set Attacked mystery; the packed galleries roared And history marched to the drums of a clear idea, The aim of the Rational City, quick to admire, Quick to tire."

"There is no love; There are only the various envies, all of them sad."

"... This land is not the sweet home that it looks, Nor its peace the historical calm of a site Where something was settled once and for all: A backward And dilapidated province, connected To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain Seedy appeal."

"She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead."

"A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign."

"Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place."

"The mass and majesty of this world, all That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes like to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died."

"That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept Or one could weep because another wept."

"The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long."

"To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?"

"This great society is going to smash; They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods."

"How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me."

"Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day."

"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water."

"What reverence is rightly paid To a divinity so odd He lets the Adam whom he made Perform the Acts of God?"

"It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it."

"Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand."

"The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it."

"In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments."

"Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered."

"One cannot review a bad book without showing off."

"At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year."

"No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted."

"Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud."

"How happy the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe."

"All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work "comes" to him."

"In the course of many centuries a few laborsaving devices have been introduced into the mental kitchen — alcohol, coffee, tobacco, Benzedrine, etc. — but these are very crude, constantly breaking down, and liable to injure the cook. Literary composition in the twentieth century A.D. is pretty much what it was in the twentieth century B.C.: nearly everything has still to be done by hand."

"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about."

"Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master’s commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too "personal" style."

"It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ."

"The old lady, quoted by E. M. Forster — "How can I know what I think till I see what I say?""

"Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest."

"The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor — dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor."

""The unacknowledged legislators of the world" describes the secret police, not the poets."

"The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines." And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona.""

"Speaking for myself, the questions which interest me most when reading a poem are two. The first is technical: "Here is a verbal contraption. How does it work?" The second is, in the broadest sense, moral: "What kind of a guy inhabits this poem? What is his notion of the good life or the good place? His notion of the Evil One? What does he conceal from the reader? What does he conceal even from himself?""

"Whatever its actual content and overt interest, every poem is rooted in imaginative awe. Poetry can do a hundred and one things, delight, sadden, disturb, amuse, instruct — it may express every possible shade of emotion, and describe every conceivable kind of event, but there is only one thing that all poetry must do; it must praise all it can for being and for happening."

"Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods."

"The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them, because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are, therefore, speechless.When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes."

"What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. This is bad for everyone; the majority lose all genuine taste of their own, and the minority become cultural snobs."

"All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman."

"Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self."

"History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology."

"A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish."

"One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission."

"When I consider others I can easily believe that their bodies express their personalities and that the two are inseparable. But it is impossible for me not to feel that my body is other than I, that I inhabit it like a house, and that my face is a mask which, with or without my consent, conceals my real nature from others."

"The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me."

"Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods."

"Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books."

"Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality."

"To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged."

"The detective must be either the official representative of the ethical or the exceptional individual who is in a state of grace."

"Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest."

"Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return."

"The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish."

"All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am.""

"All pity is self-pity."

"In societies with fewer opportunities for amusement, it was also easier to tell a mere wish from a real desire. If, in order to hear some music, a man has to wait for six months and then walk twenty miles, it is easy to tell whether the words, "I should like to hear some music," mean what they appear to mean, or merely, "At this moment I should like to forget myself." When all he has to do is press a switch, it is more difficult. He may easily come to believe that wishes can come true."

"Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind."

"Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist."

"The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age."

"To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one."

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."

"A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason."

"No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games."

"Unfortunately for the modern dramatist, during the past century and a half the public realm has been less and less of a realm where human deeds are done, and more and more of a realm of mere human behavior. The contemporary dramatist has lost his natural subject."

"When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won."

"A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become."

"Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so."

"If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. ... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni."

"Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake."

"No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible."

"If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor."

"Any one who attempts to translate from one tongue into another will know moods of despair when he feels he is wasting his time upon an impossible task. But, irrespective of success or failure, the mere attempt can teach a writer much about his own language which he would find it hard to learn elsewhere."

"Some thirty inches from my nose The frontier of my Person goes, And all the untilled air between Is private pagus or demesne. Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes I beckon you to fraternize, Beware of rudely crossing it: I have no gun, but I can spit."

"Lifted off the potty, Infants from their mothers Hear their first impartial Words of wordly praise: Hence, to start the morning With a satisfactory Dump is a good omen All our adult days."

"Brains evolved after bowels, therefore, Great assets as fine raiment and good looks can be on festive occasions, they are not essential like artful cooks and stalwart digestions."

"Don Juan needs no bed, being far too impatient to undress, nor do Tristan and Isolde, much too in love to care for so mundane a matter, but unmythical mortals require one, and prefer to take their clothes off, if only to sleep"

"Some perks belong, though to all unwilling celibates: our rooms are seldom battlefields, we enjoy the pleasure of reading in bed (as we grow older, it's true, we may find it prudent to get nodding drunk first), we retain the light to choose our sacred image."

"God bless the U.S.A., so large, So friendly, and so rich."

"When a just man dies, Lamentation and praise, Sorrow and joy, are one."

"Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover's kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one's neck."

"Americans—like omelets: there is no such thing as a pretty good one."

"Thoughts of his own death, like the distant roll of thunder at a picnic."

"The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips."

"Can sixty make sense to sixteen-Plus? What has my camp in common with theirs, With buttons and beards and Be-Ins? Much, I hope. In Acts it is written Taste was no problem at Pentecost."

"Of course, Behaviorism "works." So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public."

"The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own."

"Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith."

"May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that "faith" is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?"

"All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation."

"Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable."

"We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our "natural" attitude toward the "other" is one of either indifference or hostility."

"Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting and significant than any romance, however passionate."

"A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. ... This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own."

"I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones."

"To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention — on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God — that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. ... The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer."

"The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. ... Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice."

"It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful."

"In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it — not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it."

"I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a "suspension of belief." A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true."

"It's natural the Boys should whoop it up for so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure it would not have occurred to women to think worth while, made possible onlybecause we like huddling in gangs and knowing the exact time."

"A grand gesture. But what does it period? What does it osse? We were always adroiter with objects than lives, and more facile at courage than kindness: from the momentthe first flint was flaked this landing was merely a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's, still don't fit us exactly, modern only in this—our lack of decorum."

"A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere."

"Healing," Papa would tell me, "is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing Nature."

"Normally, when one passes someone on the street who is in pain, one either tries to help him, or one simply looks the other way. With a photo there's no human decision; you're not there; you can't turn away; you simply gape. It's a form of voyeurism."

"It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940.""

"A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over."

"I never write when I'm drunk. Why should one need aids? The Muse is a high-spirited girl who doesn't like to be brutally or coarsely wooed. And she doesn't like slavish devotion — then she lies."

"I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language."

"A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence."

"The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is."

"Man...always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself. Lastly by the classical apotheosis of Man-God, Augustine opposes the Christian belief in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. The former is a Hercules who compels recognition by the great deeds he does in establishing for the common people in the law, order and prosperity they cannot establish for themselves, by his manifestation of superior power; the latter reveals to fallen man that God is love by suffering, i.e. by refusing to compel recognition, choosing instead to be a victim of man's self-love. The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new."

"The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident."

"Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth."

"I may want to sleep with Miss America, but I have no wish to hear her talk about herself and her family."

"The mystics themselves do not seem to have believed their physical and mental sufferings to be a sign of grace, but it is unfortunate that it is precisely physical manifestations which appeal most to the religiosity of the mob. A woman might spend twenty years nursing lepers without having any notice taken of her, but let her once exhibit the stigmata or live for long periods on nothing but the Host and water, and in no time the crowd will be clamoring for her beatification."

"In the late Middle Ages there were, no doubt, many persons in monasteries and convents who had no business there and should have been out in the world earning an honest living, but today it may very well be that there are many persons trying to earn a living in the world and driven by failure into mental homes whose true home would be the cloister."

"He suffers from one great literary defect, which is often found in lonely geniuses: he never knows when to stop. Lonely people are apt to fall in love with the sound of their own voice, as Narcissus fell in love with his reflection, not out of conceit but out of despair of finding another who will listen and respond."

"I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them."

"A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader's business."

"Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic."

"Machines have no political opinions, but they have profound political effects. They demand a strict regimentation of time, and, by abolishing the need for manual skill, have transformed the majority of the population from workers into laborers. There are, that is to say, fewer and fewer jobs which a man can find a pride and satisfaction in doing well, more and more which have no interest in themselves and can be valued only for the money they provide."

"In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.The virtue of patriotism has been extolled most loudly and publicly by nations that are in the process of conquering others, by the Roman, for example, in the first century B.C., the French in the 1790s, the English in the nineteenth century, and the Germans in the first half of the twentieth. To such people, love of one's country involves denying the right of others, of the Gauls, the Italians, the Indians, the Poles, to love theirs."

"Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear; what-is-not is the profundity of what-is."

"Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask."

"Most people are even less original in their dreaming than in their waking life; their dreams are more monotonous than their thoughts and oddly enough, more literary."

"In all technologically "advanced" countries, fashion has replaced tradition, so that involuntary membership in a society can no longer provide a feeling of community."

"It is...axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction."

"In any modern city, a great deal of our energy has to be expended in not seeing, not hearing, not smelling. An inhabitant of New York who possessed the sensory acuteness of an African Bushman would very soon go mad."

"One can only blaspheme if one believes."

"Murder is commoner among cooks than among the members of any other profession."

"Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others."

"The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen."

"It's impossible to represent a saint. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, in the position of having almost infinitely free will."

"Criticism should be a casual conversation."

"It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen."

"Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape."

"There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, "Did you get an erection?" If the answer is "Yes" from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic."

"You have to see the sex act comically, as a child."

"Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties. But here, fidelity is the only bond."

"The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears."

"What people don't realize is that intimacy has its conventions as well as ordinary social intercourse. There are three cardinal rules — don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters."

"You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people."

"Art is born of humiliation."

"A real book reads us."

"As a poet—not as a citizen—there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption. When it’s corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear, and this leads to violence."

"My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain."

"Love each other or perish."

"Now is the age of anxiety."

"We are all on earth to help others. What on earth the others are here for, I can't imagine."

"A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep."

"Minus times minus equals plus, The reason for this we need not discuss."

"Music is the best means we have of digesting time."

"Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic."

"No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him."

"Water is the soul of the earth."

"In a century of the symbolist, surreal, and absurd, W. H. Auden is essentially a poet of the reasonable."

"Spain is a hundred line poem from Auden; it is good medium Auden in a good cause — the Spanish Medical Aid. The Marxian theory of history does not go very happily into verse, but the conclusion is very fine."

"We have one poet of genius in Auden who is able to write prolifically, carelessly and exquisitely, nor does he seem to have to pay any price for his inspiration. It is as if he worked under the influence of some mysterious drug, which presents him with a private vision, a mastery of form and vocabulary."

"The poet Auden said, "Thousands have lived without love; none without water." Ninety-seven percent of Earth's water is ocean. No blue, no green. If you think the ocean isn't important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system."

"Auden is something of an intellectual jackdaw, picking up bright pebbles of ideas so as to fit them into exciting conceptual patterns."

"W. H. Auden's poem, Spain, is fit to stand beside great predecessors in its moving, yet serene expression of contemporary feeling towards the heart-rending events of the political world. The theme of the poem lies in the comparison between the secular achievements of the past and the hope which is possible for the future with the horrors of the present and the sacrifices which perhaps it demands from those of this generation who think and feel rightly."

"As the poet W. H. Auden wrote: "Truth, like love and sleep, resents/Approaches that are too intense." I call this Auden's rule."

"His satire has been criticized at times as irresponsible : this is to misunderstand its motive and aim: in so far as it proceeds from the life of one social class, a class which has lost its responsibility and civilizing impetus, the terms of this satire are bound to be superficially irresponsible. But no contemporary writing shows so clearly the revulsion of the artist from a society which can no longer support him, his need to identify himself with a class that can provide for his imagination."

"He is all ice and woodenfaced acrobatics."

"Wystan Auden read us some of his new poem in the evening...I follow Auden in his derision of patriotism, class distinctions, comfort, and all the ineptitudes of the middle-classes. But when he also derides the other soft little harmless things which make my life comfortable, I feel a chill autumn wind. I feel that were I a communist the type of person whom I should most wish to attack would not be the millionaire or the imperialist, but the soft, reasonable, tolerant, secure, self-satisfied intellectuals like Vita and myself. A man like Auden with his fierce repudiation of half-way houses and his gentle integrity makes one feel terribly discontented with one’s own smug successfulness. I go to bed feeling terribly Edwardian and back-number, and yet, thank God, delighted that people like Wystan Auden should actually exist."

"I really wrote in his (Auden's) style. I was crazy about him. I loved his poems so much that I was using this British language all the time—I was saying trousers and subaltern and things like that. You understand I was a Bronx kid. We went through a few poems, and he kept asking me, do you really talk like that? And I kept saying, Oh yeah, well, sometimes. That was the great thing I learned from Auden: that you’d better talk your own language. Then I asked him what young writers now ask me—and I always tell them this story—I said to Auden, Well, do you think I should keep writing? He laughed and then became very solemn. If you’re a writer, he said, you’ll keep writing no matter what. That’s not a question a writer should ask. Something like that, not exactly, but close."

"He proclaimed so diminished a scope for poetry, including mine. I had little use for his beginnings and middles. Yet he was one of the masters."

"In terms of English and American poets, it would be quite just to call this The Age of Auden. Not only because Auden was such a dominant and successful poet, but because he went through all the contradictory ideological phases, from Marx to God. He really is representative in that sense."

"I sometimes think of Auden's poetry as a hygiene, a knowledge and practice, based on a brilliantly prejudiced analysis of contemporary disorders, relating to the preservation and promotion of health, a sanitary science and a flusher of melancholies. I sometimes think of his poetry as a great war, admire intensely the mature, religious, and logical fighter, and deprecate the boy bushranger."

"Auden was a religious poet in the nature of Herbert-is of this guy shambling along somewhere down lower Manhattan, almost looking like a bum in the way that he's going by, but containing within him a tremendous concern for others. All those big words. Auden could write them because he was a great poet. He could write Pity with a capital "P," and he could write Justice, and the Just. Maybe the authority to write of such emotions and qualities with a capital letter is gone now. But Auden was entitled to do it, and he believed in doing it."

"It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess. Who would not mourn that an ample palace, of surpassingly graceful architecture, fill'd with luxuries, and embellish'd with fine pictures and sculpture, should stand cold and still and vacant, and never be known or enjoy'd by its owner? Would such a fact as this cause your sadness? Then be sad. For there is a palace, to which the courts of the most sumptuous kings are but a frivolous patch, and, though it is always waiting for them, not one of its owners ever enters there with any genuine sense of its grandeur and glory. I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty."

"Talk not so much, then, young artist, of the great old masters, who but painted and chisell'd. Study not only their productions. There is a still higher school for him who would kindle his fire with coal from the altar of the loftiest and purest art. It is the school of all grand actions and grand virtues, of heroism, of the death of patriots and martyrs — of all the mighty deeds written in the pages of history — deeds of daring, and enthusiasm, devotion, and fortitude."

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured . . . . others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches . . . . and shall master all attachment."

"In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball ... Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms ... the game of ball is glorious."

"I have just this moment heard from the front — there is nothing yet of a movement, but each side is continually on the alert, expecting something to happen. O Mother, to think that we are to have here soon what I have seen so many times, the awful loads and trains and boatloads of poor, bloody, and pale and wounded young men again — for that is what we certainly will, and before very long. I see all the little signs, getting ready in the hospitals, etc.; it is dreadful when one thinks about it. I sometimes think over the sights I have myself seen: the arrival of the wounded after a battle, and the scenes on the field, too, and I can hardly believe my own recollections. What an awful thing war is! Mother, it seems not men but a lot of devils and butchers butchering each other."

"Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864. The happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is indeed most strange. The democratic republic has paid her to-day the terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the nations of the world that her union should be broken, her future cut off, and that she should be compell'd to descend to the level of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great. There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the United States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember'd by it. There is not one but would help toward that dismemberment, if it dared. [...] Are we indignant? alarm'd? Do we feel jeopardized? No; help'd, braced, concentrated, rather. We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the old world."

"We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake."

"Some people are so much sunlight to the square inch. I am still bathing in the cheer he radiated."

"There was a kind of labor agitator here today—a socialist, or something like that: young, a rather beautiful boy — full of enthusiasms: the finest type of the man in earnest about himself and about life. I was sorry to see him come: I am somehow afraid of agitators, though I believe in agitation: but I was more sorry to see him go than come. Some people are so much sunlight to the square inch. I am still bathing in the cheer he radiated. ... Cheer! cheer! Is there anything better in this world anywhere than cheer — just cheer? Any religion better? — any art? Just cheer!"

"I find I'm a good deal more of a socialist than I thought I was: maybe not technically, politically, so, but intrinsically, in my meanings."

"I said: "Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!" He was hilarious: "That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.""

"If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere — probably more than the rest of the world combined. Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations — many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too."

"I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love."

"I say the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion."

"I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion’s sake."

"None has begun to think how divine he himself is and how certain the future is."

"Nothing can happen more beautiful than death."

"I loafe and invite my soul."

"I have no mockings or arguments; I witness and wait."

"In the faces of men and women I see God."

"I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

"I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, "Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country—I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.""

"Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth."

"The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman."

"In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection."

"All, all for immortality, Love like the light silently wrapping all."

"Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination! Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?"

"Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality, And the vast that is evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead."

"Thunder on! Stride on! Democracy. Strike with vengeful stroke!"

"O Banner! Not houses of peace are you, nor any nor all of their prosperity; if need be you shall have every one of those houses to destroy them; You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money; May they stand fast then? Not an hour, unless you, above them and all, stand fast."

"Over all the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the eternal stars."

"Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling!"

"Lo! the moon ascending! Up from the East, the silvery round moon; Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon; Immense and silent moon."

"Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again and ever again, this soiled world."

"When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed, And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night, I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring."

"Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death."

"Praised be the fathomless universe For life and joy and for objects and knowledge curious; And for love, sweet love—But praise! O praise and praise For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death."

"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done! The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting."

"Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs."

"Peace is always beautiful."

"What do you suppose will satisfy the soul except to walk free and own no superior?"

"To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle."

"I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not-day exhibited; I was thinking this globe enough, till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes."

"I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death."

"I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!"

"The paths to the house I seek to make, But leave to those to come the house itself."

"Society waits unformed and is between things ended and things begun."

"Now obey thy cherished secret wish, Embrace thy friends—leave all in order; To port and hawser's tie no more returning, Depart upon thy endless cruise, old Sailor!"

"I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed; I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation."

"Be curious, not judgmental."

"I see great things in baseball, It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism, tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set, repair those losses and be a blessing to us."

"Yes, Mexico must be thoroughly chastised! Let our arms now be carried with a spirit which shall teach the world that, while we are not forward for a quarrel, American knows how to crush, as well as expand!"

"Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you."

"Native American literature should be important to Americans not as a curio, an artifact of the American past that has little pertinence to an American present or future, but rather as a major tradition that informs American writers ranging from Cotton Mather and Nathaniel Hawthorne through Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and William Faulkner to Adrienne Rich, Toni Cade Bambara, and Judy Grahn."

"I rank Muriel Rukeyser with Walt Whitman, the essential American poet, democratic at the level of hope."

"When I was young I once found a book in a Dutch translation, 'The leaves of Grass'. It was the first time a book touched me by its feeling of freedom and open spaces, the way the poet spoke of the ocean by describing a drop of water in his hand. Walt Whitman was offering the world an open hand (now we call it democracy) and my 'Monument for Walt Whitman' became this open hand with mirrors, so you can see inside yourself."

"Incompossible, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both—as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man."

"the contributions of people whom we may now identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender are integral and central to how we conceptualize our national history. Without the work of social activists, thinkers, writers, and artists such as We'Wha, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Martha "Calamity" Jane Cannary Burke, Edith Guerrier, Countee Cullen, Ethel Waters, Bayard Rustin, Roy Cohn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cherrie Moraga, and Lily Tomlin, we would not have the country that we have today."

"Whitman...a man full-blooded and brotherly, unselfconscious in his democracy and genuinely at ease with all kinds and classes."

"The populist poet of Jacksonian democracy, Walt Whitman, sang the song of manhood and the Anglo-American super race that had been steeled through empire. As an enthusiastic supporter of the US war against Mexico in 1846, Whitman proposed the stationing of sixty thousand US troops in Mexico in order to establish a regime change there "whose efficiency and permanency shall be guaranteed by the United States. This will bring out enterprise, open the way for manufacturers and commerce, into which the immense dead capital of the country [Mexico] will find its way."2 Whitman explicitly grounded this prescription in racism: "The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated; it is the law of the races, history.... A superior grade of rats come and then all the minor rats are cleared out." The whole world would benefit from US expansion: "We pant to see our country and its rule far-reaching. What has miserable, inefficient Mexico... to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?" In September 1846, when General Zachary Taylor's troops captured Monterrey, Whitman hailed it as "another clinching proof of the indomitable energy of the Anglo-Saxon character" Whitman's sentiments reflected the established US origin myth that had the frontier settlers replacing the Native peoples as historical destiny, adding his own theoretical twist of what would later be called social Darwinism."

"Most of the books published during the five-year period leading up to, during, and after the invasion of Mexico were war-mongering tracts. Euro-American settlers were nearly all literate, and this was the period of the foundational "American literature," with writers James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville all active-each of whom remains read, revered, and studied in the twenty-first century, as national and nationalist writers, not as colonialists. Although some of the writers, like Melville and Longfellow, paid little attention to the war, most of the others either fiercely supported it or opposed it. Whitman, a supporter, was also enamored of the violent Indian- and Mexican-killing Texas Rangers. Whitman saw the war as bolstering US self-respect and believed that a "true American" would be unable to resist "this pride in our victorious armies.""

"I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "LEAVES OF GRASS." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging..."

"The whole world has given heroic figures to humanity, who in the face of persecution and obloquy have lived and fought for their right and the right of mankind to free and unstinted expression. America has the distinction of having contributed a large quota of native-born children who have most assuredly not lagged behind. Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Voltairine de Cleyre...Moses Harman...Horace Traubel...and quite an array of other brave souls have expressed themselves in keeping with their vision of a new social order based on freedom from every form of coercion. True, the price they had to pay was high. They were deprived of most of the comforts society offers to ability and talent, but denies when they will not be subservient. But whatever the price, their lives were enriched beyond the common lot."

"I had started reading Marx and Lenin, but at that point I think Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau had more effect on me. What I responded to in my readings were emotional rather than theoretical questions. I was developing a hatred of the brutality of the existing economic system, a hatred of the impersonal degradation of human beings. That's what moved me as a teenager, and stayed with me."

"I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession."

"One Whitman is miracle enough, and when he comes again it will be the end of the world."

"Walt Whitman; I love his poetry."

"I know the formal element in Walt Whitman's poetry found and enormous echo throughout the world. Yet Walt Whitman's significance lies elsewhere. He combined the contemplation of nature and of civilization which are apparently either contradictory, into a single intoxicating vision of life, because he always had sight of the transitoriness of all phenomena. He said: "Living is the little that is left over from dying." so he gave his whole heart to every leaf of grass. I admire in him the reconciliation of art and nature. When the war between the Northern and Southern States in America, which first really set in motion the power of our present machine world, first broke out, Walt Whitman became a medical orderly. He did what all of us ought to do, particularly today. He helped the weak, the sick and the defeated. He was a Christian and–with a close affinity to us Jews–he was therefore an important measure of the status and worth of humanity."

"I mean to carry on in the tradition of Walt Whitman. Whitman says, "I sing the body electric" and "I sing the body from top to toe." He writes about his goal of celebrating the modern man as he calls it, and he sings the American self."

"I felt some really exciting things were happening with the language in the Sixties because people were finding that vocabulary for psychedelic states or visions or social action. But as I was working with that language, I saw too how it had its roots a hundred years ago in Whitman. So if it goes back a hundred years to Whitman, then it goes back thirty more to Poe. I feel very much in that tradition, showing people how 1960 was using language of the 1860s. Because we don't remember. Walt Whitman said, "Look to the East, that's also your motherland." He already had that idea that our myths are not just from Europe, but from Asia. So I'm saying, "Look at Asia," because we already know that we come from Europe. For a long time when we say classical, we meant Greek and Roman. And I'm saying, "Look, there's more classics, more.""

"I like the freedom that Walt Whitman was using to play with and shape the American language. Especially in writing Tripmaster Monkey-I just lifted lines from Leaves of Grass. You would think they were modern Sixties' slang-"Trippers and Askers" and "Linguists and Contenders Surround Me"-all of that-"Song of the Open Road," "Song of Occupations"-I just took those for title headings for my book. I like the rhythm of his language and the freedom and the wildness of it. It's so American. And also his vision of a new kind of human being that was going to be formed in this country-although he never specifically said Chinese-ethnic Chinese also I'd like to think he meant all kinds of people. And also I love that throughout Leaves of Grass he always says "men and women," "male and female." He's so different from other writers of his time, and even of this time. Even a hundred years ago he always included women and he always used [those phrases], "men and women," "male and female.""

"Behold great Whitman, whose licentious line Delights the rake, and warms the souls of swine; Whose fever'd fancy shuns the measur'd pace, And copies Ovid's filth without his grace. In his rough brain a genius might have grown, Had he not sought to play the brute alone; But void of shame, he let his wit run wild, And liv'd and wrote as Adam's bestial child. Averse to culture, strange to humankind, He never knew the pleasures of the mind. Scorning the pure, the delicate, the clean, His joys were sordid, and his morals mean. Thro' his gross thoughts a native vigour ran, From which he deem'd himself the perfect man: But want of decency his rank decreas'd, And sunk him to the level of the beast. Would that his Muse had dy'd before her birth, Nor spread such foul corruption o'er the earth."

"Walt was always working on the same book/First edition did not/have his name on cover/He reviewed himself in newspapers anonymously/quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson/without permission/on the spine/Emerson was not thrilled/Take a breath/Full breath/That's what I call a poet"

"Anyone can visit Walt Whitman's birthing corner on/Long Island./The guide points and says, There, right there, he was/born./Some visitors can't move on quickly/to the next room./They are hypnotized./What if Walt had never left this corner or stepped out/into the streets/to do and say all he did?/Then who would we be?"

"When Whitman in Song of Myself wrote "Camerado, this is no book. Who touches this touches a man, and "What I assume you shall assume," he articulated an abiding impulse latent within all poetry. The women's poetry movement today is a carrier of that same impulse and makes it possible for us to "assume" more than we did before."

"I read a lot. In poetry, I liked W. H. Auden more than anyone. I loved British writers and the novels I grew up with, Twain, Dickens, and so on. I was not influenced say by Walt Whitman or anyone like that. His freedom was not my freedom, and so it didn’t affect me."

"I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman — I have detested you long enough."

"Whitman’s masterpiece, his whole vision, is exactly about this: life as a quest for truth, love, beauty, goodness, and freedom; life as the art of becoming human through the cultivation of the human soul."

"Whitman is a "bad influence"; that is, he cannot be imitated."

"Whitman to me is the most fascinating of American poets. Whitman started to write the great poetry from scratch after he had written all that junk for newspapers, the sentimental lyrical poems. All of a sudden he wrote Leaves of Grass. When I was teaching at the University of Nebraska, my friend James Miller was chairman of the English Department. He wrote the first book attempting to make a parallel between the structure of Leaves of Grass and the steps of the mystical experience as in St. John of the Cross. I was completely bowled over by this, not having been able to explain how Whitman came to write “Song of Myself,” which is unlike anything not only in American literature, but unique in all the world. The parallels to it are mystical literature. Miller tried to show that there was actual evidence for this kind of experience, which evidently happens at a particular moment in someone's life. ... When I saw the negative reaction to Whitman with the great ruling critics of the time, I couldn't believe it. Eliot never really gave up hammering away on Whitman, neither did Pound. Although Pound makes little concessions. Whitman, you know, didn't have any influence in this country until Allen Ginsberg came along."

"I would think Walt Whitman probably had more influence on my whole poetic thinking than anybody, but I never dreamed of trying to write in the Whitman manner."

"With Whitman, the exhilarations are specifically aimed at the pioneer; I don't see any obstructions. I don't see the Indians coming in the opposite direction. I don't see Indian massacres. I don't see brutalities, scalpings, and burning and torturing. It's a sanitized version of infinite wheat fields. I think a great poet has a deeper sense of evil, a wickedness of malice and malignity."

"When I read the poetry of Walt Whitman, I could understand why he answered the question, “Do I contradict myself?" with "Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.""

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."

"Atheism should always be encouraged (i.e. rationalistic not emotional atheism) for the sake of the Faith."

"Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural — but little developed — aptitude for seriousness."

"A dangerous person to disagree with."

"‘A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.’"

"There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet."

"... were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death."

"My general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion."

"It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."

"I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. Its Name is and its one Idea is to be Useful!!"

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

"It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London."

"I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me."

"If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph."

"The 'greatness' of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards."

"When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way."

"It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it."

"The division between those who accept, and those who deny, Christian revelation I take to be the most profound division between human beings."

"No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.…Poetry…remains one person talking to another....no poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is the master of the prosaic."

"Fortunate the man who, at the right moment meets the right friend; fortunate also the man who at the right moment meets the right enemy. I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy... A country within which the divisions have gone too far is a danger to itself: a country which is too well united - whether by nature or by device, by honest purpose or by fraud and oppression - is a menace to others."

"Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages, and while I was chiefly interested at that time in philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility."

"The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down."

"The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion."

"No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest—for it is a part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude."

"A good half of the effort of understanding what the Indian philosophers were after and their subtleties make most of the great European philosophers look like school boys..."

"Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table."

"In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo."

"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening."

"There will be time to murder and create."

"And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions."

"And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”"

"Do I dare Disturb the universe?"

"In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

"For I have known them all already, known them all: — Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

"I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room."

"The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?"

"Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress?"

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."

"Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?"

"I am no prophet — and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid."

"It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a Pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: "That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.""

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous — Almost, at times, the Fool."

"I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me."

"We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

"We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity."

"The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity."

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism."

"What happens when a new work of art is created, is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new."

"Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year..."

"Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities."

"Some one said: "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know."

"What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality."

"It is not the "greatness," the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts."

"The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

"One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms."

"I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing."

"And I must borrow every changing shape To find expression."

"Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— Lean on a garden urn— Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair."

"Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand."

"Sometimes these cogitations still amaze The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose."

"Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions."

"I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates."

"The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn."

"Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, The army of unalterable law."

"His laughter tinkled among the teacups."

"He laughed like an irresponsible fœtus."

"Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain."

"Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign!" The word within a word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness."

"Weave the wind. I have no ghosts, An old man in a draughty house Under a windy knob."

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late What's not believed in, or if still believed, In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree."

"The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last We have not reached conclusion, when I Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last I have not made this show purposelessly And it is not by any concitation Of the backward devils. I would meet you upon this honestly. I that was near your heart was removed therefrom To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition. I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated?"

"so the countess passed on until she came through the little park, where Niobe presented her with a cabinet, and so departed."

"The broad-backed hippopotamus Rests on his belly in the mud; Although he seems so firm to us He is merely flesh and blood."

"Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin"

"Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye is underlined for emphasis; Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss."

"Where are the eagles and the trumpets? Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps. Over buttered scones and crumpets Weeping, weeping multitudes Droop in a hundred A.B.C.'s"

"April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain."

"There is shadow under this red rock (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

"I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence."

"Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations."

"Unreal city, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many."

"O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It's so elegant So intelligent"

"O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."

"Who is the third who walks always beside you When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you"

"What is that sound high in the air Murmur of maternal lamentation Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the flat horizon only What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal"

"In this decayed hole among the mountainsIn the faint moonlight, the grass is singingOver the tumbled graves, about the chapelThere is the empty chapel, only the wind's home."

"Then spoke the thunder DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed."

"I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison."

"These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih"

"Mistah Kurtz — he dead"

"A penny for the Old Guy"

"We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar."

"Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion."

"Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us — if at all — not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men."

"Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star."

"This is the dead land This is cactus land."

"Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow."

"This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper."

"Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?"

"Because I do not hope to know The infirm glory of the positive hour Because I do not think Because I know I shall not know The one veritable transitory power Because I cannot drink There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again"

"Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessèd face"

"Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice"

"Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us"

"Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still."

"Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only The wind will listen."

"Lady of silences Calm and distressed Torn and most whole Rose of memory Rose of forgetfulness Exhausted and life-giving Worried reposeful The single Rose Is now the Garden Where all loves end Terminate torment Of love unsatisfied The greater torment Of love satisfied End of the endless Journey to no end Conclusion of all that Is inconclusible Speech without word and Word of no speech Grace to the Mother For the Garden Where all love ends."

"This is the land which ye Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance."

"Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree In the cool of the day."

"Terminate torment Of love unsatisfied The greater torment Of love satisfied."

"Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown, Lilac and brown hair; Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair, Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair Climbing the third stair."

"Redeem The time. Redeem The unread vision in the higher dream While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse."

"If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard; Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word."

"Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence."

"Wavering between the profit and the loss In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying (Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things From the wide window towards the granite shore The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying Unbroken wings."

"And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices And the weak spirit quickens to rebel For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell."

"This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks."

"Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden, Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood Teach us to care and not to care"

"Even among these rocks, Our peace in His will."

"Sister, mother And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated And let my cry come unto Thee."

"The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit. O perpetual revolution of configured stars, O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons, O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying! The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust."

"The lot of man is ceaseless labour, Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder, Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant. I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know That it is hard to be really useful, resigning The things that men count for happiness, seeking The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting With equal face those that bring ignominy, The applause of all or the love of none. All men are ready to invest their money But most expect dividends. I say to you: Make perfect your will. I say: take no thought of the harvest, But only of proper sowing."

"The world turns and the world changes, But one thing does not change. In all of my years, one thing does not change, However you disguise it, this thing does not change: The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil."

"You neglect and belittle the desert. The desert is not remote in southern tropics The desert is not only around the corner, The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you, The desert is in the heart of your brother."

"Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen."

"In the vacant places We will build with new bricks"

"Where the bricks are fallen We will build with new stone Where the beams are rotten We will build with new timbers Where the word is unspoken We will build with new speech There is work together A Church for all And a job for each Every man to his work."

"What life have you, if you have not life together? There is not life that is not in community, And no community not lived in praise of ."

"And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads, And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance, But all dash to and fro in motor cars, Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere."

"Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore."

"I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate Between futile speculation and unconsidered action."

"And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people: Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls.""

"When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city? Do you huddle close together because you love each other?" What will you answer? "We all dwell together To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"?"

"Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions."

"There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not. You shall not deny the Stranger."

"They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. But the man that is shall shadow The man that pretends to be."

"Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word, Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being; Bestial as always before, carnal, self seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before, Yet always struggling, always reaffirming,always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light; Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way."

"But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where. Men have left not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason, And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic."

"What have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?"

"There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem And the holy places defiled; Peter the Hermit, scourging with words. And among his hearers were a few good men, Many who were evil, And most who were neither, Like all men in all places."

"In spite of all the dishonour, the broken standards, the broken lives, The broken faith in one place or another, There was something left that was more than the tales Of old men on winter evenings."

"Our age is an age of moderate virtue And moderate vice"

"The soul of Man must quicken to creation."

"Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless Joined with the artist's eye, new life, new form, new colour. Out of the sea of sound the life of music, Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions, Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings, There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation."

"The work of creation is never without travail."

"Light Light The visible reminder of Invisible Light."

"O Light Invisible, we praise Thee! Too bright for mortal vision."

"We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!"

"The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn't just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have ."

"When the day's hustle and bustle is done, Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun."

"Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat — And there isn't any call for me to shout it: For he will do As he do do And there's no doing anything about it!"

"Jellicle Cats come out tonight, Jellicle Cats come one come all: The Jellicle Moon is shining bright — Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball."

"Old Deuteronomy's lived a long time; He's a Cat who has lived many lives in succession. He was famous in proverb and famous in rhyme A long while before Queen Victoria's accession."

"And we all say: OH! Well I never! Was there ever A Cat so clever As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!"

"He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair: For when they reach the scene of crime — Macavity's not there!"

"Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity."

"He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare: At whatever time the deed took place- Macavity wasn't there."

"Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity. You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square — But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!"

"They say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known (I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone) Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!"

"These modern productions are all very well, But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell, That moment of mystery When I made history As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell."

"You now have learned enough to see That Cats are much like you and me And other people whom we find Possessed of various types of mind. For some are sane and some are mad And some are good and some are bad And some are better, some are worse — But all may be described in verse."

"When a term has become as universally sanctified as 'democracy' now is, I begin to wonder whether it means anything, in meaning too many things […]. Some persons have gone so far as to affirm, as something self-evident, that democracy is the only regime compatible with Christianity; on the other hand, the word is not abandoned by sympathisers with the government of Germany. If anybody ever attacked democracy, I might discover what the word means. Certainly there is a sense in which Britain and America are more democratic than Germany; but on the other hand, defenders of the totalitarian system can make out a plausible case for maintaining that what we have is not democracy, but financial oligarchy."

"That Liberalism may be a tendency towards something very different from itself, is a possibility in its nature. For it is something which tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination; and the destination is likely to present a very different picture when arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in imagination. By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanised or brutalised control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos."

"[T]he tendency of unlimited industrialism is to create bodies of men and women—of all classes—detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion: in other words, a mob. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined."

"For the great mass of humanity whose attention is occupied mostly by their direct relation to the soil, or the sea, or the machine, and to a small number of persons, pleasures, and duties,[…] as their capacity for thinking about the objects of faith is small, their Christianity may be almost wholly realised in behaviour: both in their customary and periodic religious observances, and in a traditional code of behaviour towards their neighbours."

"In a negative liberal society you have no agreement as to there being any body of knowledge which any educated person should have acquired at any particular stage: the idea of wisdom disappears, and you get sporadic and unrelated experimentation. A nation's system of education is much more important than its system of government; only a proper system of education can unify the active and the contemplative life, action and speculation, politics and the arts. But 'education', said Coleridge, 'is to be reformed, and defined as synonymous with instruction'. This revolution has been effected; to the populace education means instruction. The next step to be taken by the clericalism of secularism, is the inculcation of the political principles approved by the party in power."

"The Spirit descends in different ways, and I cannot foresee any future society in which we could classify Christians and non-Christians simply by their professions of belief, or even, by any rigid code, by their behaviour. In the present ubiquity of ignorance, one cannot but suspect that many who call themselves Christians do not understand what the word means, and that some who would vigorously repudiate Christianity are more Christian than many who maintain it."

"It is not enthusiasm, but dogma, that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society."

"Any human scheme for society is realised only when the great mass of humanity has become adapted to it; but this adaptation becomes also, insensibly, an adaptation of the scheme itself to the mass on which it operates: the overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution, and what is realised is so unlike the end that enthusiasm conceived, that foresight would weaken the effort."

"We may say that religion, as distinguished from modern paganism, implies a life in conformity with nature. It may be observed that the natural life and the supernatural life have a conformity to each other which neither has with the mechanistic life."

"We are being made aware that the organisation of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may pay dearly. I need only mention, as an instance now very much before the public eye, the results of 'soil-erosion'—the exploitation of the earth, on a vast scale for two generations, for commercial profit: immediate benefits leading to dearth and desert."

"[A] wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God."

"As political philosophy derives its sanction from ethics, and ethics from the truth of religion, it is only by returning to the eternal source of truth that we can hope for any social organisation which will not, to its ultimate destruction, ignore some essential aspect of reality. The term 'democracy', as I have said again and again, does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces you dislike—it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin."

"[T]he German national religion […] expounded by Professor Wilhelm Hauer […] is deistic, claiming to 'worship a more than human God'. He believes it to be 'an eruption from the biological and spiritual depths of the German nation', and unless one is prepared to deny that the German nation has such depths, I do not see that the statement can be ridiculed. He believes that 'each new age must mold its own religious forms'—alas, many persons in Anglo-Saxon countries hold the same belief. He believes […] also in something very popular in this country, the religion of the blue sky, the grass and flowers.[…] The German National Religion, as Hauer expounds it, turns out to be something with which we are already familiar. So, if the German Religion is also your religion, the sooner you realise the fact the better."

"For most people, the actual constitution of society, or that which their more generous passions wish to bring about, is right, and Christianity must be adapted to it. But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative, or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things; liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things."

""Order"—that is what makes Mr Eliot's critical work so precious to us today; he has imposed an order on our chaos, our intellectual anarchy; he throws us a plank as we drown in a sea of platitudes and foaming stupidities. His criticism is sane without being dull or imitative; original without eccentricities; profound without obscurity; cultured without affectation; vigorous without being superficial."

"In writing his verse plays, Mr. Eliot took, I believe, the only possible line. Except at a few unusual moments, he kept the style Drap."

"We are both poets and we both like to play. That's the similarity. The difference is this: I like to play euchre. He likes to play Eucharist."

"If time is on a plane of existence great writers sometimes penetrate, doesn't T. S. Eliot wander ahead over Ground Zero when he writes, way back in 1922, 'And I will show you something different from either/Your shadow at morning striding behind you/or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.'"

"A damned good poet and a fair critic; but he can kiss my ass as a man and he never hit a ball out of the infield in his life."

"All through the 1980s I'd hear echoes of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men": "This is the way the world ends/this is the way the world ends/this is the way the world ends/not with a bang but a whimper.""

"It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.""

"When I was in high school, I had never read Black poetry. The one poet of color whom I had read, and loved, was Pablo Neruda. I have to say that Neruda and Millay were the two poets I loved. All the others didn't make much sense. Except Eliot. He really got to me. That man really did it for me with language."

"Wylie and Millay were standard in high school-women whom I really loved. Eliot. That man used to put me on fire with his words."

"T. S. Eliot, Millay, Helene Margaret, I read and connected with because they made me feel what they were feeling, or wanted to feel."

"T.S. Eliot says, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”"

"Most of the great critics of English poetry have also been poets: Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Shelley, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, to name a few."

"In my college years T. S. Eliot was the most talked-of poet. The Cocktail Party played on Broadway at that time; his name and work were already part of student conversations, alluded to in courses…Christianity aside, there was for me a repulsive quality to Eliot's poetry: an aversion to ordinary life and people. I couldn't have said that then. I tried for some time to admire the structure, the learnedness, the cadences of the poems, but the voice overall sounded dry and sad to me. Eliot was still alive, and I did not know how much his poetry had been a struggle with self-hatred and breakdown; nor was I particularly aware that his form of Christianity, like the religion I had rejected, was aligned with a reactionary politics. He was supposed to be a master, but, as the young woman I was, seeking possibilities-and responsibilities-of existence in poetry, I felt he was useless for me."

"Muriel Rukeyser was a breakaway from the irony and fatalism of modernists like Eliot and Auden."

"With the children, form is unknown. None of the limits are acknowledged; one cannot speak in terms of freedom, T. S. Eliot would say. "There is no freedom in art," he believes; "freedom is only freedom when it appears against the background of an artificial limitation.""

"Did you know T.S. Eliot's little poem about me, called "Mr. Apollinax"? He seems to have noticed the madness."

"I didn't like him a bit. He was a poseur. He was married to this woman who was very pretty. My husband and I were asked to see them, and my husband roamed around the flat and there were endless photographs of T. S. Eliot and bits of his poetry done in embroidery by pious American ladies, and only one picture of his wife, and that was when she was getting married. Henry pointed it out to me and said, "I don't think I like that man.""

"The Diary of Vaslav Nijinjsky reaches a limit of sincerity beyond any of the documents that we have referred to on this study. There are other modern works that express the same sense that civilized life is a form of living death; notably the poetry of T. S. Eliot and the novels of Franz Kafka; but there is an element of prophetic denunciation in both, the attitude of healthy men rebuking their sick neighbors. We possess no other record of the Outsider's problems that was written by a man about to be defeated and permanently smashed by those problems."

"Some poets [...] like Eliot, have become so aware of the huge mechanism of the past that their poems read like a scholarly conglomeration of a century’s wisdom, and are difficult to follow unless we have an intimate knowledge of Dante, the Golden Bough, and the weather-reports in Sanskrit."

"It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has. Some cognizance of the fact must be taken in your teaching."

"Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense."

"A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words."

"My Sorrow, when she's here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane."

"Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: She's glad the birds are gone away, She's glad her simple worsted gray Is silver now with clinging mist."

"The desolate, deserted trees, The faded earth, the heavy sky, The beauties she so truly sees, She thinks I have no eye for these, And vexes me for reason why."

"Not yesterday I learned to know The love of bare November days Before the coming of the snow, But it were vain to tell her so, And they are better for her praise."

"I do not see why I should e'er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true."

"The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows."

"There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground."

"Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?"

"Men work together," I told him from the heart, "Whether they work together or apart."

"Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast."

"My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours.""

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down."

"He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”"

"He saw her from the bottom of the stairs Before she saw him. She was starting down, Looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step and then undid it To raise herself and look again. He spoke Advancing toward her: "What is it you see From up there always?—for I want to know.""

"She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see, Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see. But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh.""

"The little graveyard where my people are! So small the window frames the whole of it."

"He said twice over before he knew himself: "Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?" 'Not you!'—'Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it! I must get out of here. I must get air.'— I don't know rightly whether any man can.'"

"'My words are nearly always an offense. I don't know how to speak of anything So as to please you. But I might be taught, I should suppose. I can't say I see how.'"

"A man must partly give up being a man With womenfolk. We could have some arrangement By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off Anything special you're a-mind to name. Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love. Two that don't love can't live together without them. But two that do can't live together with them." She moved the latch a little. "Don't — don't go. Don't carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it's something human. Let me into your grief. I'm not so much Unlike other folks as your standing there Apart would make me out. Give me my chance."

"'I can repeat the very words you were saying: "Three foggy mornings and one rainy day Will rot the best birch fence a man can build." Think of it, talk like that at such a time! What had how long it takes a birch to rot To do with what was in the darkened parlor? You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all."

"I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha'n't be gone long. — You come too."

"And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope."

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in."

"The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all. No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone. Friends make pretence of following to the grave, But before one is in it, their minds are turned And making the best of their way back to life And living people, and things they understand."

"Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor."

"I've broken Anne of gathering bouquets. It's not fair to the child. It can't be helped though: Pressed into service means pressed out of shape."

"My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still. And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now."

"Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep."

"By good rights I ought not to have so much Put on me, but there seems no other way. Len says one steady pull more ought to do it. He says the best way out is always through. And I agree to that, or in so far As that I can see no way out but through — Leastways for me — and then they’ll be convinced."

"I always have felt strange when we came home To the dark house after so long an absence, And the key rattled loudly into place Seemed to warn someone to be getting out At one door as we entered at another."

"To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay."

"I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

"The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it."

""Don't let him cut my hand off— The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" So. But the hand was gone already."

"Her crop was a miscellany When all was said and done, A little bit of everything, A great deal of none."

"But he sent her Good-by, And said to be good, And wear her red hood, And look for skunk tracks In the snow with an ax — And do everything!"

"Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools."

"There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing."

"The Hyla breed That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow."

"We love the things we love for what they are."

"“My dear, It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe, For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings—there are no such things. There are only middles."

"I’d like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better."

"I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

"I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on. I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone."

"All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms."

"I own any form of humor shows fear and inferiority. Irony is simply a kind of guardedness. So is a twinkle. It keeps the reader from criticism. Whittier, when he shows any style at all is probably a greater person than Longfellow as he is lifted priestlike above consideration of the scornful. Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt, above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever. At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions: to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to this side of the standing argument. Humor is the most engaging cowardice."

"It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it."

"Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. A least lyric alone may have a hard time, but it can make a beginning, and lyric will be piled on lyric till all are easily heard as sung or spoken by a person in a scene — in character, in a setting. By whom, where and when is the question."

"A dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic."

"If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving."

"We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? Do we know any better where we are, And how it stands between the night tonight And a man with a smoky lantern chimney? How different from the way it ever stood?"

"Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of."

"The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil."

"Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay."

"The snake stood up for evil in the Garden."

"Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue."

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice."

"The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued."

"And then we saw him bolt. We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and gray, Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes."

"Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air"

"Now no joy but lacks salt, That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove."

"How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below. I have to be gone for a season or so."

"The birds that came to it through the air At broken windows flew out and in, Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh From too much dwelling on what has been."

"Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow."

"My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year."

"He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake."

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."

"Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven, godlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths – and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something."

"Let me be the one To do what is done."

"I turned to speak to God About the world's despair But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn't there. God turned to speak to me (Don't anybody laugh) God found I wasn't there At least not over half."

"And be all plunderers curst. 'The best way to hate is the worst. 'Tis to find what the hated need, Never mind of what actual worth, And wipe that out of the earth. Let them die of unsatisfied greed, Of unsatisfied love of display, Of unsatisfied love of the high, Unvulgar, unsoiled, and ideal. Let their trappings be taken away. Let them suffer starvation and die Of being brought down to the real."

"Dust always blowing about the town, Except when sea-fog laid it down, And I was one of the children told Some of the blowing dust was gold."

"All the dust the wind blew high Appeared like god in the sunset sky, But I was one of the children told Some of the dust was really gold."

"Such was life in the Golden Gate: Gold dusted all we drank and ate, And I was one of the children told, 'We all must eat our peck of gold.'"

"You could not tell, and yet it looked as if The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, The cliff in being backed by continent; It looked as if a night of dark intent Was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage. There would be more than ocean-water broken Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken."

"Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me."

"That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather."

"One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night."

"If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise, I'm not the one for putting off the proof. Let it be overwhelming, off a roof And round a corner, blizzard snow for dust, And blind me to a standstill if it must."

"It must be the brook Can trust itself to go by contraries The way I can with you — and you with me — Because we're — we're — I don't know What we are."

"Our life runs down in sending up the clock. The brook runs down in sending up our life. The sun runs down in sending up the brook. And there is something sending up the sun."

"The world has room to make a bear feel free; The universe seems cramped to you and me."

"Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct."

"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."

"Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second. My mouth is sealed for the duration of my stay here. I'm not even going to write letters around to explain to collectors my not having had any Christmas card this year. I'm not going to explain anything personal any more."

"When I see young men doing so wonderfully well in athletics, I don't feel angry at them. I feel jealous of them. I wish that some of my boys in writing would do the same thing. ... You must have form — performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports — and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both. As I said, the person who spends his time criticizing the play around him will never write poetry. He will write criticism — for the New Republic."

"You see the beauty of my proposal is It needn’t wait on general revolution. I bid you to a one-man revolution— The only revolution that is coming."

"Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family — But not much in between, unless a college."

"The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You´re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you´re two months back in the middle of March."

"But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For heaven and the future´s sakes."

"The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be — The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea."

"Never ask of money spent Where the spender thinks it went. Nobody was ever meant To remember or invent What he did with every cent."

"Wind goes from farm to farm in wave on wave, But carries no cry of what is hoped to be. There may be little or much beyond the grave, But the strong are saying nothing until they see."

"Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot be parted nor be swept away From one another once you are agreed That life is only life forevermore Together wing to wing and oar to oar."

"No memory of having starred Atones for later disregard, Or keeps the end from being hard. Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at your side Than none at all. Provide, provide!"

"The old dog barks backward without getting up; I can remember when he was a pup."

"Who said it mattered What monkeys did or didn't understand? They might not understand the burning-glass. They might not understand the sun itself. It's knowing what to do with things that counts."

"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars — on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places."

"I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old."

"It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song."

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may Want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight. We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick. Modern instruments of precision are being used to make things crooked as if by eye and hand in the old days."

"Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went."

"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."

"O Star (the fairest one in sight) We grant your loftiness the right To some obscurity of cloud — It will not do to say of night, Since dark is what brings out your light. Some mystery becomes the proud. But to be wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed. Say something to us that we can learn By heart and when alone repeat. Say something! And it says "I burn.""

"It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height. So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may take something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid."

"We disparage reason. But all the time it's what we're most concerned with. There's will as motor and there's will as brakes. Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear."

"Deliver us from committees."

"The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them."

"Courage is of the heart by derivation, And great it is. But fear is of the soul."

"The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people."

"Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become."

"'Twas Age imposed on poems Their gather-roses burden To warn against the danger That overtaken lovers From being overflooded With happiness should have it And yet not know they have it."

"She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when the sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease."

"But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To every thing on earth the compass round, And only by one's going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware."

"Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It Lacks In Length"

"Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went — Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. But no, I was out for stars; I would not come in. I meant not even if asked; And I hadn't been."

"She drew back; he was calm "It is this that had the power," And he lashed his open palm With the tender-headed flower."

"He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all the garden round From having heard the daylong voice of Eve Had added to their own an oversound, Her tone of meaning but without the words."

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows."

"If this uncertain age in which we dwell Were really as dark as I hear sages tell, And I convinced that they were really sages, I should not curse myself with it to hell"

"They've tried to grasp with too much social fact Too large a situation. You and I Would be afraid if we should comprehend And get outside of too much bad statistics, Our muscles never could again contract: We never could recover human shape, But must live lives out mentally agape Or die of philosophical distention. That's how we feel — and we're no special mystics."

"We can't appraise the time in which we act. But for the folly of it, let's pretend We know enough to know it for adverse."

"I may have wept that any should have died Or missed their chance, or not have been their best, Or been their riches, fame, or love denied; On me as much as any is the jest. I take my incompleteness with the rest. God bless himself can no one else be blessed. I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori. And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

"Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on."

"Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take — and took."

"I stopped my song and almost heart, For any eye is an evil eye That looks in onto a mood apart."

"All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief."

"Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry – Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there's a story in a book about it."

"As for the woods' excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees."

"The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if you're lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up to all but me."

"First there's the children's house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad."

"This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny's A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)"

"I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it, So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't. (I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion."

"You are all probably taking literature classes in which the professors teach how to get behind authors' words to determine their deeper meanings. In my case, they teach that the crow shaking snow from a hemlock tree means that evil, black, stands in contrast to the pure white good of the snow around it, like in life. They are wrong. I saw the crow, and the tree, and the snow. It was beautiful. I stopped to enjoy it. Period."

"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."

"A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair."

"People are inexterminable — like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices — that's us."

"How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint."

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on."

"The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended — and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended."

"Asked...whether he would define poetry as "escape" he answered hardily: "No. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.""

"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."

"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."

"Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with."

"The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise."

"You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular.... The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat."

"You've often heard me say – perhaps too often – that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more."

"Summoning artists to participate In the august occasions of the state Seems something artists ought to celebrate."

"Today is for my cause a day of days. And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise Who was the first to think of such a thing. This verse that in acknowledgement I bring Goes back to the beginning of the end Of what had been for centuries the trend; A turning point in modern history."

"Colonial had been the thing to be As long as the great issue was to see What country'd be the one to dominate By character, by tongue, by native trait, The new world Christopher Columbus found. The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed And counted out. Heroic deeds were done. Elizabeth the First and England won. Now came on a new order of the ages That in the Latin of our founding sages (Is it not written on the dollar bill We carry in our purse and pocket still?)"

"So much those heroes knew and understood, I mean the great four, Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison So much they saw as consecrated seers They must have seen ahead what not appears, They would bring empires down about our ears And by the example of our Declaration Make everybody want to be a nation."

"And this is no aristocratic joke At the expense of negligible folk. We see how seriously the races swarm In their attempts at sovereignty and form. They are our wards we think to some extent For the time being and with their consent, To teach them how Democracy is meant."

""New order of the ages" did they say? If it looks none too orderly today, 'Tis a confusion it was ours to start So in it have to take courageous part. No one of honest feeling would approve A ruler who pretended not to love A turbulence he had the better of."

"Everyone knows the glory of the twain Who gave America the aeroplane To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane. Some poor fool has been saying in his heart Glory is out of date in life and art. Our venture in revolution and outlawry Has justified itself in freedom's story Right down to now in glory upon glory."

"Come fresh from an election like the last, The greatest vote a people ever cast, So close yet sure to be abided by, It is no miracle our mood is high."

"Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs."

"There was the book of profile tales declaring For the emboldened politicians daring To break with followers when in the wrong, A healthy independence of the throng, A democratic form of right divine To rule first answerable to high design. There is a call to life a little sterner, And braver for the earner, learner, yearner. Less criticism of the field and court And more preoccupation with the sport."

"It makes the prophet in us all presage The glory of a next Augustan age Of a power leading from its strength and pride, Of young ambition eager to be tried, Firm in our free beliefs without dismay, In any game the nations want to play. A golden age of poetry and power Of which this noonday's the beginning hour."

"Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me."

"I am assured at any rate Man's practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There's always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at."

"It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling."

"Till we came to be There was not a trace Of a thinking race Anywhere in space."

"Unless I'm wrong I but obey The urge of a song: I'm—bound—away! And I may return If dissatisfied With what I learn From having died."

"It is the future that creates his present. All is an interminable chain of longing."

"“Well, who begun it?” That's what at the end of a war We always say not who won it, Or what it was foughten for."

"Every artist must have two fears -- the fear of God and the fear of man -- fear of God that his creation will ultimately be found unworthy and the fear of man that he will be misunderstood by his fellows."

"If poetry isn't understanding all, the whole word, then it isn't worth anything. Young poets forget that poetry must include the mind as well as the emotions. Too many poets delude themselves by thinking the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous and must be left in."

"It is hard to believe that he chops nearly as much wood as he pretends to, or that cows, hens, and barnyards are his chief loves. He has been known to enjoy the tea life of social England and is at present a professor of poetry in a college."

"This day devoted to the memory of Robert Frost offers an opportunity for reflection which is prized by politicians as well as by others, and even by poets, for Robert Frost was one of the granite figures of our time in America. He was supremely two things: an artist and an American. A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers. In America, our heroes have customarily run to men of large accomplishments. But today this college and country honors a man whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit, not to our political beliefs but to our insight, not to our self-esteem, but to our self-comprehension. In honoring Robert Frost, we therefore can pay honor to the deepest sources of our national strength. That strength takes many forms, and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant. The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us."

"Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost. He brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation. "I have been" he wrote, "one acquainted with the night." And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair. At bottom, he held a deep faith in the spirit of man, and it is hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment."

"Robert Frost was often skeptical about projects for human improvement, yet I do not think he would disdain this hope. As he wrote during the uncertain days of the Second War: Take human nature altogether since time began ... And it must be a little more in favor of man, Say a fraction of one percent at the very least ... Our hold on this planet wouldn't have so increased. Because of Mr. Frost's life and work, because of the life and work of this college, our hold on this planet has increased."

"Translators, again-the most abused and patient lot of folk on earth-are helpful in making us better acquainted; though we hope the time will soon come when citizens of the twenty-one republics will no longer need translators. There is no reason for our not speaking each other's language...Ernesto Montenegro, on the other hand, has introduced Sandburg, Frost, Robinson, Masters, and many other North American poets to the Spanish reading public."

"Muna Lee "Cultural Interchanges between the Americas" (1929) in A Pan-American Life: Selected Poetry and Prose of Muna Lee, edited and with biography by Jonathan Cohen (2004)"

"What I'm trying to do is something defined by Robert Frost: when he said "a poem is a momentary stay against confusion." When you write a poem you have a moment in which all confusion ceases and you understand one thing perfectly."

""But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep." Taken from a popular poem by Robert Frost, these two lines could serve as an anthem for Mexican women in the Southwest, women who, as a social and economic group, still find themselves at or near the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder."

"The poet stands in relation to Nature; this does not mean landscape, as Robert Frost points out, but "the whole Goddamn machinery.""

"The warriors that fought for their country, and bled, Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed; No stone tells the place where their ashes repose, Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes. They died in their glory, surrounded by fame, And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim; They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest."

"Music is the universal language of mankind — poetry their universal pastime and delight."

"Stars of the summer night! Far in yon azure deeps, Hide, hide your golden light! She sleeps! My lady sleeps!"

"Dreams of the summer night! Tell her, her lover keeps Watch! while in slumbers light She sleeps."

"She floats upon the river of his thoughts."

"Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, And death, and time shall disappear,— Forever there, but never here! The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly,— "Forever — never! Never — forever!""

"I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where."

"And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend."

"In the valley of the Pegnitz, where, across broad meadow-lands, Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremburg, the ancient, stands.Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng."

"Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies; Dead he is not, but departed, — for the artist never dies."

"Where'er a noble deed is wrought, Where'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts in glad surprise To higher levels rise."

"St. Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame!"

"The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night."

"The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath, While underneath such leafy tents they keep The long, mysterious Exodus of Death."

"A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

"A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood."

"Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said; For ye are living poems, And all the rest are dead."

"Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupation, That is known as the Children's Hour."

"I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet."

"Build on, and make thy castles high and fair, Rising and reaching upward to the skies; Listen to voices in the upper air, Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries."

"He speaketh not; and yet there lies A conversation in his eyes."

"In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face — the face of one long dead — Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light."

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending; Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse."

"There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid."

"O Bells of San Blas in vain Ye call back the Past again; The Past is deaf to your prayer! Out of the shadows of night The world rolls into light; It is daybreak everywhere."

"He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce."

"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."

"Books are sepulchres of thought."

"This is the place. Stand still, my steed,— Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy past The forms that once have been."

"The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark."

"The surest pledge of a deathless name Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken."

"He has singed the beard of the king of Spain."

"Look, then, into thine heart, and write!"

"I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls!"

"There is a Reaper, whose name is Death, And, with his sickle keen, He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, And the flowers that grow between."

"Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath, The Reaper came that day; 'Twas an angel visited the green earth, And took the flowers away."

"The star of the unconquered will."

"Oh, fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know erelong,— Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong."

"Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine."

"The hooded clouds, like friars, Tell their beads in drops of rain."

"Tell me not, in mournful numbers, "Life is but an empty dream!" For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem."

"Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul."

"Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Finds us further than to-day."

"Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave."

"Trust no future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!"

"Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;"

"Footprints, that perhaps another, Travelling o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again."

"Let us, then, be up and doing. With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait."

"Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours Weeping upon his bed has sate, He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers."

"Something the heart must have to cherish, Must love and joy and sorrow learn; Something with passion clasp, or perish And in itself to ashes burn."

"Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

"In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer."

"Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart."

"Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number."

"I know a maiden fair to see, Take care! She can both false and friendly be, Beware! Beware! Trust her not, She is fooling thee."

"Thus, seamed with many scars Bursting these prison bars, Up to its native stars My soul ascended! There from the flowing bowl Deep drinks the warrior's soul, Skoal! to the Northland! skoal! —Thus the tale ended."

"No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own."

"Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary."

"I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just; It consecrates each grave within its walls, And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust."

"Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!"

"O thou child of many prayers! Life hath quicksands; life hath snares!"

"The shades of night were falling fast, As through an Alpine village passed A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, A banner with the strange device, Excelsior!"

"In happy homes he saw the light Of household fires gleam warm and bright."

"Try not the Pass!" the old man said; "Dark lowers the tempest overhead."

"O stay," the maiden said, "and rest Thy weary head upon this breast!"

"Beware the pine tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!"

"A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found."

"For Time will teach thee soon the truth, There are no birds in last year's nest!"

"The prayer of Ajax was for light."

"O suffering, sad humanity! O ye afflicted ones, who lie Steeped to the lips in misery, Longing, yet afraid to die, Patient, though sorely tried!"

"Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands."

"His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man."

"Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose."

"It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company."

""O father! I see a gleaming light. Oh say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he."

"And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept Toward the reef of Norman's Woe."

"Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe!"

"Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals and forts."

"I stood on the bridge at midnight, As the clocks were striking the hour, And the moon rose o'er the city, Behind the dark church-tower."

"The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight."

"A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain."

"Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day."

"Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time."

"Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start."

"And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away."

"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms."

"Alike were they free from Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics. Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows; But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their owners; There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance."

"When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music."

"Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels."

"Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted; If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment; That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain."

"Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike."

"And as she looked around, she saw how Death the consoler, Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever."

"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done."

"Ah, how wonderful is the advent of spring! — the great annual miracle of the blossoming of Aaron's rod, repeated on myriads and myriads of branches! — the gentle progression and growth of herbs, flowers, trees, — gentle and yet irrepressible, — which no force can stay, no violence restrain, like love, that wins its way and cannot be withstood by any human power, because itself is divine power. If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be."

"I am more afraid of deserving criticism than of receiving it. I stand in awe of my own opinion. The secret demerits of which we alone, perhaps, are conscious, are often more difficult to bear than those which have been publicly censured in us, and thus in some degree atoned for."

"Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think."

"Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee."

"All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time."

"Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest."

"In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the gods see everywhere."

"God sent his Singers upon earth With songs of sadness and of mirth, That they might touch the hearts of men, And bring them back to heaven again."

"But the great Master said, "I see No best in kind, but in degree; I gave a various gift to each, To charm, to strengthen, and to teach."

"O holy trust! O endless sense of rest! Like the beloved John To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, And thus to journey on!"

"My soul is full of longing For the secret of the Sea, And the heart of the great ocean Sends a thrilling pulse through me."

"There is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair!"

"The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead."

"But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise."

"What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps."

"There is no Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death."

"Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives whom we call dead."

"Build me straight, O worthy Master! Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!"

"For his heart was in his work, and the heart Giveth grace unto every Art."

"And see! she stirs! She starts,—she moves,—she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel, And, spurning with her foot the ground, With one exulting, joyous bound, She leaps into the ocean's arms!"

"Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives."

"And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives."

"Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"

"Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee,—are all with thee!"

"Time has laid his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, But as a harper lays his open palm Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations."

"Ah, the souls of those that die Are but sunbeams lifted higher."

"The grave itself is but a covered bridge, Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!"

"I think I have proved, by profound researches, The error of all those doctrines so vicious Of the old Areopagite Dyonisius, That are making such terrible work in the churches, By Michael the Stammerer sent from the East, And done into Latin by that Scottish beast, Erigena Johannes, who dares to maintain, In the face of the truth, the error infernal, That the universe is and must be eternal; At first laying down, as a fact fundamental, That nothing with God can be accidental; Then asserting that God before the creation Could not have existed, because it is plain That, had he existed, he would have created; Which is begging the question that should be debated, And moveth me less to anger than laughter. All nature, he holds, is a respiration Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing hereafter Will inhale it into his bosom again, So that nothing but God alone will remain."

"Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter!"

"Don Quixote thought he could have made beautiful bird-cages and toothpicks if his brain had not been so full of ideas of chivalry. Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions."

"A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child."

"Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work, rather than its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as the bad heart of Procrustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture."

"We often excuse our own want of philanthropy by giving the name of fanaticism to the more ardent zeal of others."

"Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, — but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite."

"As turning the logs will make a dull fire burn, so change of studies a dull brain."

"The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature, — were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature."

"Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, — a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen. By going out a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend at a corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some great occasion of good, or avoid some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution to the dark enigma but the one word, "Providence"."

""Let us build such a church, that those who come after us shall take us for madmen," said the old canon of Seville, when the great cathedral was planned. Perhaps through every mind passes some such thought, when it first entertains the design of a great and seemingly impossible action, the end of which it dimly foresees. This divine madness enters more or less into all our noblest undertakings."

"I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and short-comings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self-assertion of youth."

"Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author."

"Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple."

"When we reflect that all the aspects of Nature, all the emotions of the soul, and all the events of life, have been the subjects of poetry for hundreds and thousands of years, we can hardly wonder that there should be so many resemblances and coincidences of expression among poets, but rather that they are not more numerous and more striking."

"The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness, — the taste and stain from the lees of the vat."

"The tragic element in poetry is like Saturn in alchemy, — the Malevolent, the Destroyer of Nature ; but without it no true Aurum Potabile, or Elixir of Life, can be made."

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

"If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble to woo me? If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning!"

"Singing the Hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puritan anthem."

"But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent language, Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival, Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over-running with laughter, Said, in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?""

"God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting."

"Into a world unknown,—the corner-stone of a nation."

"It is the fate of a woman Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence."

"He is a little chimney and heated hot in a moment."

"Thinking the deed, and not the creed, Would help us in our utmost need."

"Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year."

"One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm For the country folk to be up and to arm."

"And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night."

"All things come round to him who will but wait."

"At all feasts where ale was strongest Sat the merry monarch longest, First to come and last to go."

"And suddenly through the drifting brume The blare of the horns began to ring."

"Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit; Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth; Greater than anger is love that subdueth."

"A town that boasts inhabitants like me Can have no lack of good society."

"His form was ponderous, and his step was slow; There never was so wise a man before; He seemed the incarnate "Well, I told you so!""

"Our ingress into the world Was naked and bare; Our progress through the world Is trouble and care; Our egress from the world Will be nobody knows where; But if we do well here We shall do well there; And I could tell you no more, Should I preach a whole year!"

"Moons waxed and waned, the lilacs bloomed and died, In the broad river ebbed and flowed the tide, Ships went to sea, and ships came home from sea, And the slow years sailed by and ceased to be."

"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."

"Let him not boast who puts his armor on As he who puts it off, the battle done. Study yourselves; and most of all note well Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel. Not every blossom ripens into fruit."

"And now, my classmates; ye remaining few That number not the half of those we knew, Ye, against whose familiar names not yet The fatal asterisk of death is set, Ye I salute!"

"The scholar and the world! The endless strife, The discord in the harmonies of life! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!"

"Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate."

"For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day."

"And dimly seen, a tangled mass Of Walls and woods of light and shade Stands beckoning up the Stelvio pass Varenna, with its white cascade. I ask myself, Is this a dream? Will it all vanish into air? Is there a land of such supreme And perfect beauty anywhere!"

": Much must he toil who serves the Immortal Gods."

": With useless endeavour Forever, forever, Is Sisyphus rolling His stone up the mountain!"

": [waking] I am alone. These faces in the mirrors Are but the shadows and phantoms of myself; They cannot help nor hinder. No one sees me, Save the all-seeing Gods... She lifts the lid. A dense mist rises from the chest and fills the room. Pandora falls senseless on the floor. Storm without. : Fever of the heart and brain, Sorrow, pestilence, and pain, Moans of anguish, maniac laughter, All the evils that hereafter Shall afflict and vex mankind, All into the air have risen From the chambers of their prison; Only Hope remains behind."

": Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain.Never shall be the loss Restored, till Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires."

"Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change To something new, to something strange; Nothing that is can pause or stay; The moon will wax, the moon will wane, The mist and cloud will turn to rain, The rain to mist and cloud again, To-morrow be to-day."

"Thine was the prophet's vision, thine The exaltation, the divine Insanity of noble minds, That never falters nor abates, But labors and endures and waits, Till all that it foresees it finds Or what it can not find creates."

"Art is the child of Nature; yes, Her darling child, in whom we trace The features of the mother's face, Her aspect and her attitude, All her majestic loveliness Chastened and softened and subdued Into a more attractive grace, And with a human sense imbued. He is the greatest artist, then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who follows Nature."

"What land is this? Yon pretty town Is Delft, with all its wares displayed: The pride, the market-place, the crown And centre of the Potter's trade."

"She knew the life-long martyrdom, The weariness, the endless pain Of waiting for some one to come Who nevermore would come again."

"Three Silences there are: the first of speech, The second of desire, the third of thought; This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught With dreams and visions, was the first to teach."

"The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart, When the full river of feeling overflows."

"Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest On this Field of the Grounded Arms, Where foes no more molest, Nor sentry’s shot alarms!"

"Ye have slept on the ground before, And started to your feet At the cannon’s sudden roar, Or the drum’s redoubling beat. But in this camp of Death No sound your slumber breaks; Here is no fevered breath, No wound that bleeds and aches."

"All is repose and peace, Untrampled lies the sod; The shouts of battle cease, It is the Truce of God! Rest, comrades, rest and sleep! The thoughts of men shall be As sentinels to keep Your rest from danger free. Your silent tents of green We deck with fragrant flowers; Yours has the suffering been, The memory shall be ours."

"Hospitality sitting with Gladness."

"There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery."

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all."

"I would like to ask you if you have ever read what I consider the greatest of poems of the United States—that is, Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha ... And then through that poem you have descriptions of Indian life and Indian legends which to me are of inexpressible beauty; and I do not hesitate to say, as far as my reading has led me to judge, that that is a poem that deserves to live, and will live; and at this moment it is the finest poem of any length that has been produced by any writer of the United States."

"I wish I had known you, Longfellow, but truly I did, as a small reader with a book cracked wide, speaking aloud on the old wooden stairs of my grandparents' home, saying your words, between the daylight and the dark, swinging them like small lanterns which have brought me to this place by your bed on a late day in June, in your yellow house by the giant linden tree, still wondering at words and the length of a mattress."

"Another poem that appeals to all bold, courageous souls in "The Warning," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who, some critics aver, won more English hearts over to the anti-slavery cause than did the "Quaker Poet."

"The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with. Something, in other words, that can't be shared, like your own skin: not even by a minority. Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets. Its proclivity for such things has to do with its innate insecurity, but this realization, again, is of small comfort when Evil triumphs."

"For darkness restores what light cannot repair. There we are married, blest, we make once more the two-backed beast and children are the fair excuse of what we're naked for."

"He’d be a ruin by now, both physically and mentally. Physically because of the bottle. . . . Mentally because of that mixture of impotence and cynicism that corrodes everyone there — the stronger you are the worse it is."

"It is better to be a total failure in democracy than a martyr or the crème de la crème in tyranny."

"You know, when you go outside on the streets after having spent the day writing, you feel like a foreign body, even in your own country. This sensation perhaps feels more natural when you are really outside your country."

"This is just one example of the trimming of the self that — along with the language itself, where verbs and nouns changed places as freely as one dare to have them do so — bred in us such an overpowering sense of ambivalence that in ten years we ended up with a willpower in no way superior to a seaweed’s."

"The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy."

"It is the army that finally makes a citizen of you; without it you still have a chance, however slim, to remain a human being."

"As you pour yourself a scotch, crush a roach, or scratch your crotch, as your hand adjusts your tie, people die."

"I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish you sat on the sofa and I sat near."

"I admire Joseph for his industry, his valor, and his intelligence. He's a terrific example of someone who is a complete poet, who doesn't treat poetry as anything else but a very hard job that he does as well as he can. Lowell worked very hard too, but you feel in Joseph that that is all he lives for. In a sense that's all any of us lives for or can hope to live for. Joseph's industry is an example that I cherish a great deal."

"On fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact."

"Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said."

"Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good."

"[Everything] ideal has a natural basis and everything natural an ideal development."

"Even the most inspired verse, which boasts not without a relative justification to be immortal, becomes in the course of ages a scarcely legible hieroglyphic; the language it was written in dies, a learned education and an imaginative effort are requisite to catch even a vestige of its original force. Nothing is so irrevocable as mind."

"Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment."

"That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions."

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim."

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

"The highest form of vanity is love of fame."

"The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is a queen, infinitely fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice."

"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love."

"It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation."

"Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate."

"Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble, it must remain rare, if common, it must become mean."

"What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art."

"When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different."

"In proportion as a man's interests become humane and his efforts rational, he appropriates and expands a common life, which reappears in all individuals who reach the same impersonal level of ideas."

"Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them."

"Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that "a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them."

"Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion."

"Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit."

"Every moment celebrates obsequies over the virtues of its predecessor."

"To know how just a cause we have for grieving is already a consolation."

"The mind celebrates a little triumph whenever it can formulate a truth, however unwelcome to the flesh, or discover an actual force, however unfavourable to given interests."

"Art like life should be free, since both are experimental."

"History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rest on. In order to sift evidence we must rely on some witness, and we must trust experience before we proceed to expand it. The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe."

"When Socrates and his two great disciples composed a system of rational ethics they were hardly proposing practical legislation for mankind...They were merely writing an eloquent epitaph for their country."

"Oblivious of Democritus, the unwilling materialists of our day have generally been awkwardly intellectual and quite incapable of laughter. If they have felt anything, they have felt melancholy. Their allegiance and affection were still fixed on those mythical sentimental worlds which they saw to be illusory. The mechanical world they believed in could not please them, in spite of its extent and fertility. Giving rhetorical vent to their spleen and prejudice, they exaggerated nature's meagreness and mathematical dryness. When their imagination was chilled they spoke of nature, most unwarrantably, as dead, and when their judgment was heated they took the next step and called it unreal."

"Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome."

"Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself."

"Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood."

"The Bible is literature, not dogma."

"To covet truth is a very distinguished passion."

"Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained."

"No system would have ever been framed if people had been simply interested in knowing what is true, whatever it may be. What produces systems is the interest in maintaining against all comers that some favourite or inherited idea of ours is sufficient and right. ** p. 49"

"Our dignity is not in what we do, but in what we understand."

"To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic."

"In Walt Whitman democracy is carried into psychology and morals. The various sights, moods, and emotions are given each one vote; they are declared to be all free and equal, and the innumerable commonplace moments of life are suffered to speak like the others. Those moments formerly reputed great are not excluded, but they are made to march in the ranks with their companions—plain foot-soldiers and servants of the hour."

"Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge."

"The pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him."

"Because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the mind."

"Whenever a nation is converted to Christianity, its Christianity, in practice, must be largely converted to paganism."

"Persons who feel themselves to be exiles in this world—and what noble mind, from Empedocles down, has not had that feeling?—are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another."

"No doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes through us, and cry out as we may, it will move on. Our privilege is to have perceived it as it moves."

"Our dignity is not in what we do, but in what we understand. The whole world is doing things."

"The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it."

"England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies, hobbies, and humors."

"Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master."

"The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be."

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."

"To the mind of the ancients, who knew something of such matters, liberty and prosperity seemed hardly compatible, yet modern liberalism wants them together."

"Prosperity, both for individuals and for states, means possessions; and possessions mean burdens and harness and slavery; and slavery for the mind, too, because it is not only the rich man's time that is pre-empted, but his affections, his judgement, and the range of his thoughts."

"Liberal philosophy, at this point, ceases to be empirical and British in order to become German and transcendental. Moral life, it now believes, is not the pursuit of liberty and happiness of all sorts by all sorts of different creatures; it is the development of a single spirit in all life through a series of necessary phases, each higher than the preceding one. No man, accordingly, can really or ultimately desire anything but what the best people desire. This is the principle of the higher snobbery; and in fact, all earnest liberals are higher snobs."

"It is not politics that can bring true liberty to the soul; that must be achieved, if at all, by philosophy;"

"Liberalism has merely cleared a field in which every soul and every corporate interest may fight with every other for domination. Whoever is victorious in this struggle will make an end of liberalism; and the new order, which will deem itself saved, will have to defend itself in the following age against a new crop of rebels."

"I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty."

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests."

"The living have never shown me how to live."

"Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are."

"Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots."

"Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness."

"[The empiricist] thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing."

"Philosophers are as jealous as women. Each wants a monopoly of praise."

"The soul, too, has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit."

"The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool."

"All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible."

"Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace."

"American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism."

"All his life he [the American] jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind, or breaks a leg."

"At midday the daily food of all Spaniards was the puchero or cocido, as the dish is really called which the foreigners call pot-pourri or olla podrida. This contains principally yellow chick-peas, with a little bacon, some potatoes or other vegetables and normally also small pieces of beef or sausage, all boiled in one pot at a very slow fire; the liquid of the same makes the substantial broth that is served first."

"... I once shook hands with Longfellow at a garden party in 1881; and I often saw Dr. Holmes, who was our neighbor in Beacon Street: but Emerson I never saw."

"Animals are born and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed and peaceful only in old age."

"In solitude it is possible to love mankind; in the world, for one who knows the world, there can be nothing but secret or open war."

"I was still “at the church door”. Yet in belief, in the clarification of my philosophy, I had taken an important step. I no longer wavered between alternative views of the world, to be put on or taken off like alternative plays at the theatre. I now saw that there was only one possible play, the actual history of nature and of mankind, although there might well be ghosts among the characters and soliloquies among the speeches. Religions, all religions, and idealistic philosophies, all idealistic philosophies, were the soliloquies and the ghosts. They might be eloquent and profound. Like Hamlet's soliloquy they might be excellent reflective criticisms of the play as a whole. Nevertheless they were only parts of it, and their value as criticisms lay entirely in their fidelity to the facts, and to the sentiments which those facts aroused in the critic."

"O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art."

"In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour."

"Although a poem be not made by counting of syllables upon the fingers, yet "numbers" is the most poetical synonym we have for verse, and "measure" the most significant equivalent for beauty, for goodness, and perhaps even for truth. Those early and profound philosophers, the followers of Pythagoras, saw the essence of all things in number, and it was by weight, measure, and number, as we read in the Bible, that the Creator first brought Nature out of the void."

"There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable."

"They [the wise spirits of antiquity in the first circle of Dante's Inferno] are condemned, Dante tells us, to no other penalty than to live in desire without hope, a fate appropriate to noble souls with a clear vision of life."

"Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily."

"I leave you but the sound of many a word In mocking echoes haply overheard, I sang to heaven. My exile made me free, from world to world, from all worlds carried me."

"The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity."

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child."

"Religions are not true or false, but better or worse."

"The earth has music for those who listen."

"The working of great administrations is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought."

"The famous George Santayana quote: “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” That's the thing, though. None of us have forgotten. Darned if we're not repeating it anyway..."

"Books are “imaginative rehearsals for living,” stated novelist George Santayana. They are also a great equalizer in a diverse society. Book reading helps prepare a child for mental liberation from ignorance, fear, and falsehood."

"The writer-philosopher George Santayana is credited with the phrase: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Yet here we are, repeating that of just 52 years ago. Let us pray that come 2072, Americans then have at last heeded Santayana's warning and Dr. King’s dream is no longer words in a speech but reality being lived."

"I revelled in the keen analysis of William James, Josiah Royce and young George Santayana."

"But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy!"

"In America literary reputations come and go so swiftly," I complained, fatuously. [Santayana's] answer was swift. "It would be insufferable if they did not."

""There is no God, and Mary is his mother." Often, almost certainly incorrectly, attributed to Santayana himself. More plausibly attributed to Robert Lowell, as a sardonic description of Santayana's philosophy."

"Santayana, indeed, is the Moses of the new naturalism, who discerned the promised land from afar but still wanders himself in the desert realms of being."

"The two Indians crossed the plantation toward the slave quarters. ... "Man was not made to sweat." "That's so. See what it has done to their flesh." "Yes. Black. It has a bitter taste, too." "You have eaten of it?" "Once." ... Doom began to acquire more slaves and to cultivate some of his land, as the white people did. But he never had enough for them to do. In utter idleness the majority of them led lives transplanted whole out of African jungles ... there was a hierarchy of cousins and uncles who ruled the clan and who finally gathered in squatting conclave over the Negro question, squatting profoundly ... "We cannot eat them," one said. "Why not?" "There are too many of them." "That's true," a third said. "Once we started, we should have to eat them all. And that much flesh diet is not good for man." ... "It means work," the third said. "Let the Negroes do it," the first said. ... "Yao. Let the Negroes do it. They appear to like sweating.""

"For the holy are susceptible too to evil, even as you and I, signori; they too are helpless before sin without God's aid... and the holy can be fooled by sin as quickly as you or I, signori. Quicker, because they are holy."

"Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid. Ain't nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be."

"It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books; I wish I had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago, and like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them. It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died."

"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed. If you, not just you in this room tonight, but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this ... as individuals, men and women, you will change the earth; in one generation all the Napoleons and Hitlers and Caesars and Mussolinis and Stalins and all the other tyrants who want power and aggrandizement, and the simple politicians and time-servers who themselves are merely baffled or ignorant or afraid, who have used, or are using, or hope to use, man’s fear and greed for man’s enslavement, will have vanished from the face of it."

"Mr. Khrushchev says that Communism, the police state, will bury the free ones. He is a smart gentleman, he knows that this is nonsense since freedom, man's dim concept of and belief in the human spirit is the cause of all his troubles in his own country. But if he means that Communism will bury capitalism, he is correct. That funeral will occur about ten minutes after the police bury gambling. Because simple man, the human race, will bury both of them. That will be when we have expended the last grain, dram, and iota of our natural resources. But man himself will not be in that grave. The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next."

"There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it's the risk, the gamble. In any event it's a thing I need."

"Why that's a hundred miles away. That's a long way to go just to eat."

"Some folks wouldn't even speak when they passed me on the street. Then MGM came to town to film Intruder in the Dust, and that made some difference because I'd brought money into Oxford [Mississippi]. But it wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand thirty thousand dollars."

"Well, between Scotch and nothin', I suppose I'd take Scotch. It's the nearest thing to good moonshine I can find."

"Civilization," mused Bill once, "started with distillation."

"There is no such thing," meditated Bill, "as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damnfool if he doesn't."

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it."

"Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say."

"When people act like niggers, no matter who they are, the only thing to do is treat them like a nigger."

"Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets."

"Dilsey stroked Ben's lower head, slowly and steadily, smoothing the bang upon his brow. He wailed quietly, unhurriedly. "Hush," Dilsey said. "Hush, now. We be gone in a minute. Hush, now." He wailed quietly and steadily."

"When the shadow of the sash appeared in the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said "I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excrutiatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.""

"A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired, but then time is your misfortune."

"Clocks slay time. ... Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."

"Women do have an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves."

"It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end."

"I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind — and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town."

"I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth."

"How often have Ι lain beneath rain on a strange roof thinking of home."

"My mother is a fish."

"He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear."

"Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words."

"People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too."

"Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down."

"Sometimes I think it ain’t none of us pure crazy and ain’t none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it ain’t so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it."

"They pulled two seats together so Darl could sit by the window. One of them sat beside him, the other sat on the seat facing him, riding backward. One of them had to ride backward because state's money has a face to each backside and a backside to each face, and they are riding on the state's money which is incest. A nickel has a woman on one side and a buffalo on the other; two faces and no back. I don't know what that is. Darl had a little spy-glass he got in France at the war. In it it had a woman and a pig with two backs and no face. I know what that is."

"Darl is our brother, our brother Darl. Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying lightly in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams."

"Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what the other man or woman is doing."

"... a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he can’t escape from.’"

"Poor man. Poor mankind."

"Even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie."

"Memory believes before knowing remembers."

"... ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crisis with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth."

"We never thought, sitting in my office on those afternoons, discussing Voltaire and Ingersoll, that we would ever be brought to this, did we?You, the atheist whom the mere sight of a church spire on the sky could enrage; and I who have never been able to divorce myself from reason enough even to accept your pleasant and labor-saving theory of nihilism."

"Is Robert Ingersoll telling me that for twenty years I have leaned upon a reed no stronger than myself?"

"It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly."

"You see, if I could believe that I shall see and touch him again, I shall not have lost him. And if I have not lost him, I shall never have had a son. Because I am I through bereavement and because of it. I do not know what I was nor what I shall be. But because of death, I know that I am. And that is all the immortality of which intellect is capable and flesh should desire. Anything else is for peasants, clods, who could never have loved a son well enough to have lost him."

"Who is he who will affirm that there must be a web of flesh and bone to hold the shape of love?"

"She accepted that—not reconciled: accepted-- as though there is a breathing-point in outrage where you can accept it almost with gratitude since you can say to yourself, Thank God that is all; at least I know it all."

"... but one mistake; that alertness for measuring and weighing event against eventuality, circumstance against human nature, his own fallible judgement and mortal clay against not only human but natural forces, choosing and discarding, compromising with his dream and his ambition like you must with the horse which you take across country, over timber, which you control only through your ability to keep the animal from realising that actually you cannot, that actually it is the stronger."

"Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all."

"Happen is never once."

"You are my brother. No I'm not. I'm the nigger that's going to sleep with your sister. Unless you stop me, Henry."

""Now I want you to tell me just one thing more. Why do you hate the South?" "I dont hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I dont hate it," he said. I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!"

"... the second time I ever saw you I learned what I had read in books but I had never actually believed: that love and suffering are the same thing and that the sum of love is what you have to pay for it and any time you get it cheap you have cheated yourself."

"... not sin, he thought, I don't believe in sin. It's getting out of timing. You are born submerged in anonymous lockstep with the teeming anonymous myriads of your time and generation; you get out of step once, falter once, and you are trampled to death."

"They say love dies between two people. That's wrong. It doesn't die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you are not good enough, worthy enough. It doesn't die; you're the one that dies."

"...a mule will work for you ten years for the privilege of kicking you once."

"I told you once how I believe it isn't love that dies, it's the man and the woman, something in the man and the woman that dies, doesn't deserve the chance any more to love."

"... when she became not then half of memory became not and if I become not then all of remembering will cease to be.—Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief."

"Frenchman's Bend was a section of rich river-bottom country lying twenty miles southeast of Jefferson. Hill-cradled and remote, definite yet without boundaries, straddling into two counties and owning allegiance to neither, it had been the original grant and site of a tremendous pre-Civil War plantation, the ruins of which—the gutted shell of an enormous house with its fallen stables and slave quarters and overgrown gardens and brick terraces and promenades—were still known as the Old Frenchman's place, although the original boundaries now existed only on old faded records in the Chancery Clerk's office in the county courthouse in Jefferson, and even some of the once-fertile fields had long since reverted to the cane-and-cypress jungle from which their first master had hewed them."

"He was only ten. It seemed to him that he could see them, the two of them, shadowy in the limbo from which time emerged and became time: the old bear absolved of mortality and himself who shared a little of it. Because he recognised now what he had smelled in the huddled dogs and tasted in his own saliva, recognised fear as a boy, a youth recognises the existence of love and passion and experience which is his heritage but not yet his patrimony, from entering by chance the presence of perhaps even merely the bedroom of a woman who has loved and been loved by many men."

"He will need to be just a little bigger than smart, and a little braver than either."

"I am beginning to see the first sign of my increasing age: I dont like to know that my orders have been disobeyed, even when I knew when I gave them that they would be."

"He recognised its voice. It was the young hound which even a year ago had had no judgment and which, by the lights of the other hounds anyway, still had none. Maybe that’s what courage is, he thought."

"The doctor didn't even take out his stethoscope nor even touch him. “He’s all right,” the doctor said. “He didn’t even catch cold. He just quit.” “Quit?” McCaslin said. “Yes. Old people do that sometimes. Then they get a good night’s sleep or maybe it’s just a drink of whisky, and they change their minds.”"

"... in the commissary as it should have been, not the heart perhaps but certainly the solar-plexus of the repudiated and relinquished: the square, galleried, wooden building squatting like a portent above the fields whose laborers it still held in thrall ‘65 or no and placarded over with advertisements for snuff and cures for chills and salves and potions manufactured and sold by white men to bleach the pigment and straighten the hair of negroes that they might resemble the very race which for two hundred years had held them in bondage and from which for another hundred years not even a bloody civil war would have set them completely free."

"... the ledgers in which McCaslin recorded the slow outward trickle of food and supplies and equipment which returned each fall as cotton made and ginned and sold (two threads frail as truth and impalpable as equators yet cable-strong to bind for life them who made the cotton to the land their sweat fell on), ..."

"So let me say it: That nevertheless and notwithstanding old Carothers did own it. Bought it, got it, no matter; kept it, held it, no matter; bequeathed it: else why do you stand here relinquishing and repudiating? Held it, kept it for fifty years until you could repudiate it, while He—this Arbiter, this Architect, this Umpire—condoned—or did He? Looked down and saw—or did He? Or at least did nothing: saw, and could not, or did not see; saw, and would not, or perhaps He would not see—perverse, impotent, or blind: which?"

"“Dont you see?” he cried. “Dont you see? This whole land, the whole South, is cursed, and all of us who derive from it, whom it ever suckled, white and black both, lie under the curse? Granted that my people brought the curse onto the land: maybe for that reason their descendants alone can—not resist it, not combat it—maybe just endure and outlast it until the curse is lifted. Then your peoples’ turn will come because we have forfeited ours. But not now. Not yet. Dont you see?”"

"... leaving as next by seniority Stuart that gallant man born apparently already horsed and sabred and already knowing all there was to know about war except the slogging and brutal stupidity of it..."

"You said how on that instant when Ikkemotubbe realised that he could sell the land to Grandfather, it ceased forever to have been his."

"This Delta, he thought: This Delta. This land which man has deswamped and denuded and derivered in two generations so that white men can own plantations and commute every night to Memphis and black men own plantations and ride in jim crow cars to Chicago to live in millionaires’ mansions on Lakeshore Drive, where white men rent farms and live like niggers and niggers crop on shares and live like animals, where cotton is planted and grows man-tall in the very cracks of the sidewalks, and usury and mortgage and bankruptcy and measureless wealth, Chinese and African and Aryan and Jew, all breed and spawn together until no man has time to say which is which nor cares.... No wonder the ruined woods I used to know don’t cry for retribution! he thought: The people who have destroyed it will accomplish its revenge."

"It was just noon that Saturday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man."

"It's all now you see. Yesterday won't be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago; or to anyone who ever sailed a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought This is it: the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world's roaring rim."

"He [the writer] must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands."

"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat...."

"... I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking."

"I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

"... maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly all the time, is having to accept it."

"... so vast, so limitless in capacity is man's imagination to disperse and burn away the rubble-dross of fact and probability, leaving only truth and dream."

"The poets are wrong of course. ... But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it."

"... between what did happen and what ought to happened, I dont never have trouble picking ought."

"... even in the folly of youth we know that nothing lasts, but ... even in that folly we are afraid that maybe Nothing will last, that maybe Nothing will last forever, and anything is better than Nothing.... So now, as another poet sings, That Fancy passed me by And nothing will remain; which, praise the gods, is a damned lie since, praise, O gods! Nothing cannot remain anywhere since nothing is vacuum and vacuum is paradox and unbearable and we will have nothing of it even if we would, the damned-fool poet's Nothing."

"... innocence is innocent not because it rejects but because it accepts; is innocent not because it is impervious and invulnerable to everything, but because it is capable of accepting anything and still remaining innocent; innocent because it foreknows all and therefore doesn't have to fear or be afraid."

"You don't know very much about women, do you?" she said. "Women aren't interested in poets' dreams. They are interested in facts. It doesn't even matter whether the facts are true or not, as long as they match the other facts without leaving a rough seam."

"... women aren't interested in the romance of dreams; they are interested in the reality of facts, they don't care what facts, let alone whether they are true or not if they just dovetail with all the other facts without leaving a saw-tooth edge."

"... women are not interested in truth or romance but only in facts whether they are true or not, just so they fit all the other facts."

"She wanted to tell me. Maybe she even tried. But she couldn't. It wasn't because I was only twelve. It was because I was her child, created by her and Father because they wanted to be in bed together and nothing else would do, nobody else would do. You see? ... Because to the child, he was not created by his mother's and his father's passion or capacity for it. He couldn't have been because he was there first, he came first, before the passion; he created the passion, not only it but the man and the woman who served it; his father is not his father but his son-in-law, his mother not his mother but his daughter-in-law if he is a girl. ... and if a boy or a girl really is his father's and her mother's father-in-law or mother-in-law, which would make the girl her brother's mother no matter how much younger she was, then a girl with just one brother and him a twin at that, would maybe be his wife and mother too."

"... girls, women, are not interested in romance but only facts."

"Maybe I was completely wrong that morning when I said how women are only interested in facts because maybe men are just interested in facts too and the only difference is, women dont care whether they are facts or not just so they fit, and men dont care whether they fit or not just so they are facts."

"Because as a rule women dont really care about facts just so they fit; it's just men that dont give a damn whether they fit or not."

"The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much that he can't get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies."

"If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, all of us. Proof of that is that there are about three candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. But what is important is Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, not who wrote them, but that somebody did. The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since."

"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."

"I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing."

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done."

"Art is not concerned with environment either; it doesn't care where it is ... the best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it's the perfect milieu for an artist to work in."

"My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky."

"If I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything."

"Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him."

"No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol — cross or crescent or whatever — that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race. Its various allegories are the charts against which he measures himself and learns to know what he is. It cannot teach a man to be good as the textbook teaches him mathematics. It shows him how to discover himself, evolve for himself a moral codes and standard within his capacities and aspirations, by giving him a matchless example of suffering and sacrifice and the promise of hope."

"There were many things I could do for two or three days and earn enough money to live on for the rest of the month. By temperament I'm a vagabond and a tramp. I don't want money badly enough to work for it. In my opinion it's a shame that there is so much work in the world. One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours — all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy."

"The two great men in my time were Mann and Joyce. You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith."

"Don Quixote — I read that every year, as some do the Bible."

"The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews."

"Life is motion, and motion is concerned with what makes man move — which is ambition, power, pleasure. What time a man can devote to morality, he must take by force from the motion of which he is a part. He is compelled to make choices between good and evil sooner or later, because moral conscience demands that from him in order that he can live with himself tomorrow. His moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream."

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass."

"People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can't know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do — after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world's anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty."

"If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green. Maybe the purpose of this sorry and tragic error committed in my native Mississippi by two white adults on an afflicted Negro child is to prove to us whether or not we deserve to survive. Because if we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don't deserve to survive, and probably won't."

"Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was — only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow. I like to think of the world I created as being a kind of keystone in the universe; that, small as that keystone is, if it were ever taken away the universe itself would collapse."

"Or maybe married men dont even need reasons, being as they already got wives. Or maybe it's women that dont need reasons, for the simple reason that they never heard of a reason and wouldn't recognise it face to face, since they dont function from reasons but from necessities that couldn't nobody help nohow and that dont nobody but a fool man want to help in the second place, because he dont know no better; it aint women, it's men that takes ignorance seriously, getting into a skeer [scare] over something for no more reason than that they dont happen to know what it is."

"Man must have light. He must live in the fierce full constant glare of light, where all shadow will be defined and sharp and unique and personal: the shadow of his own singular rectitude or baseness. All human evils have to come out of obscurity and darkness, where there is nothing to dog man constantly with the shape of his own deformity."

"At least wasn't nobody, no outsider, there to hear it so maybe even before next January he was able to believe hadn't none of it even been said, like miracle: what aint believed aint seen. Miracle, pure miracle anyhow, how little a man needs to outlast jest [just] about anything."

"... life is not so much motion as an inventless repetition of motion."

"Then me too in Paris for the last two weeks, to see if the Paris of Hemingway and the Paris of Scott Fitzgerald (they were not the same ones; they merely used the same room) had vanished completely or not too."

"Because women are marvellous. They stroll perfectly bland and serene through a fact that the men have been bloodying their heads against for years; whereupon you find that the fact not only wasn't important, it wasn't really there."

"Save us, Christ, the poor sons of bitches."

"... Stevens himself hating horses even more than dogs, rating the horse an unassailable first in loathing since though both were parasites, the dog at least had the grace to be a sycophant too; it at least fawned on you and so kept you healthily ashamed of the human race. But the real reason was, though neither the horse nor the dog ever forgot anything, the dog at least forgave you; and his, Stevens's, thought was that what the world needed was more forgiving."

"No man is himself, he is the sum of his past. There is no such thing really as was because the past is. It is a part of every man, every woman, and every moment."

"That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing — from reading."

"You write a story to tell about people, man in his constant struggle with his own heart, with the hearts of others, or with his environment. It's man in the ageless, eternal struggles which we inherit and we go through as though they'd never happened before, shown for a moment in a dramatic instant of the furious motion of being alive, that's all any story is. You catch this fluidity which is human life and you focus a light on it and you stop it long enough for people to be able to see it.""

"When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it, which is not innocence but appetite; his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it, which is not ignorance but size. But Boon didn't know this. He must seduce me. And he had so little time: only from the time the train left until dark."

"A gentleman can live through anything."

"Faulkner in Dry September — or Light in August, or even in The Sound and the Fury — can really get at (as you put it, "to the bone") the truth of what the black-white relationship is in the South, and how what a dark force it is in the Southern personality. At the same time, Faulkner, as a man, as a citizen of Mississippi, is committed to what in Mississippi seems to be their past. It is one thing for Faulkner to deal with the Negro in his imagination, where he can control him; and quite another thing to deal with him in life, where he can't control him. In life, obviously the Negro, the uncontrollable Negro, simply is determined to overthrow everything in which Faulkner imagines himself to believe. It is one thing to demand justice in literature, and another thing to face the price that one has got to pay for it in life."

"It is difficult for a young person today to know what to do. You cannot take advertising seriously; you cannot be truly involved with selling, or respect yourself, if the product you make is meant to become obsolete in a year or two. There is very little real, important work to do. And where there is no work, something goes, because we discover through working what we cannot discover any other way. As Faulkner says, you cannot make love eight hours a day, or drink or walk eight hours a day. You have to do something with your life, you have to find out what it is."

"What's the difference between regional being the Southwest and regional being the South if the story is brilliant enough to be universal? Does it matter that Faulkner's universe was little? When he finished Absalom, Absalom, it wasn't about Mississippi; it was about the cosmos. So if a book like that is written by a Puerto Rican or a Native American, why should it continue to be taught as ethnic literature?"

"Faulkner falsified life for dramatic effect. It's sentimentality disguised by the corncob."

"Apparently the entire population of Jefferson, Mississippi consists of rhetoricians who would blanch at the sight of a simple declarative sentence ... Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book except that it seems to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent."

"Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You're thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes — and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he's had his first one."

"I am the child of a bilingual family that delights in tongue acrobatics of mixed syntax and vocabulary. We write as we speak, in run-on sentences (if Faulkner could do it and be called great, why can't we?)"

"Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. It is good-and universal-because it is specifically about a particular world. That's what I wish to do."

"I see the world very much in a Faulkner kind of way. People keep reappearing for me; all those women I knew in their thirties with small children when that first book came out in '59-I still know them now. There's still a lot of them around. And so I don't see life in what used to be called an alienated way. I see people going away and coming back. And I think a lot of people live that way; I don't think I'm so alone in that."

"The greatness of a writer has nothing to do with subject matter itself, only with how much the subject matter touches the author. It is the density of style which counts. Through Hemingway's style you feel matter, iron, wood. I admire Hemingway but I prefer what I know of Faulkner. Light in August is a marvelous book."

"Well, no offense: Thar ain't no sense In gittin' riled."

"Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"--the like of which I never heard in all England."

"Later, when we were forced to accept the fact that finding gold was really the primary object of a gold-mining company, we still remained there"

"And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right, This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight."

"And he says that the mountains are fairer For once being held in your thought;"

"Don't be too quick To break bad habits: better stick, Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic."

"There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death,"

"But, when the goddess' work is done, The woman's still remains."

"Each lost day has its patron saint!"

"Virtue always meets reward, But quicker when it wears a sword;"

"Ah Sin was his name."

"With the smile that was childlike and bland."

"We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor."

"Which I wish to remark,— And my language is plain,— That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar."

"Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made."

"It was six men of Hindustan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind) That each by observation Might satisfy the mind."

"And so these men of Hindustan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right And all were in the wrong. So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!"

"Again I hear the creaking step! — He's rapping at the door! — Too well I know the boding sound That ushers in a bore."

"In vain I speak of urgent tasks; In vain I scowl and pout; A frown is no extinguisher — It does not put him out!"

"He takes the strangest liberties — But never takes his leave!"

"Young men! it 's a critical thing to go Exactly right with a lady in tow; But when you are in the proper track, Just go ahead, and never look back!"

"Don't use strong drink, — pray let me advise, — It 's bad for the stomach, and ruins the eyes;"

"INGLORIOUS friend! most confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!""

""God bless the man who first invented sleep!" So Sancho Panza said, and so say I."

"But blast the man, with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off, — Early Rising!"

"I like the lad who, when his father thought To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, Cried, "Served him right! — it's not at all surprising; The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!""

""Once more, my gallant boys!" he cried: "Three times! — you know the fable, — (I'll make it thirty," muttered he, "But I will lay the cable!")"

"NAY, weep not, dearest, though the child be dead; He lives again in Heaven's unclouded life,"

"What Lowely meant she didn't know For she always avoided "everything low,""

"I'm growing fonder of my staff; I'm growing dimmer in the eyes; I'm growing fainter in my laugh; I'm growing deeper in my sighs; I'm growing careless of my dress; I'm growing frugal of my gold; I'm growing wise; I'm growing — yes, — I'm growing old!"

"I asked of Echo 't other day (Whose words are few and often funny), What to a novice she could say Of courtship, love, and matrimony. Quoth Echo, plainly, — "Matter-o'-money.""

"'T is wise to learn; 't is God-like to create."

"A youth would marry a maiden, For fair and fond was she; But she was rich, and he was poor, And so it might not be."

"A youth would marry a maiden, For fair and fond was she; But he was high and she was low, And so it might not be."

"A youth would marry a maiden, For fair and fond was she; But their sires disputed about the Mass, And so it might not be."

"Bless me! this is pleasant Riding on the Rail."

"The Poet's License! — 't is the right, Within the rule of duty, To look on all delightful things Throughout the world of beauty. To gaze with rapture at the stars That in the skies are glowing; To see the gems of perfect dye That in the woods are growing, — And more than sage astronomer, And more than learned florist, To read the glorious homilies Of Firmament and Forest."

"When Nature gives a gorgeous rose, Or yields the simplest fern, She writes this motto on the leaves, — "To whom it may concern!" And so it is the poet comes And revels in her bowers, And, — though another hold the land, Is owner of the flowers."

"In battle or business, whatever the game, In law or in love, it is ever the same; In the struggle for power, or the scramble for pelf, Let this be your motto, — Rely on yourself! For, whether the prize be a ribbon or throne, The victor is he who can go it alone!"

"A dark unfathom'd tide Of interminable pride — A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem."

"O, human love! thou spirit given, On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!"

"The happiest day — the happiest hour My sear'd and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown."

"Sound loves to revel in a summer night."

"Years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute."

"From childhood's hour I have not been As others were — I have not seen As others saw — I could not bring My passions from a common spring — From the same source I have not taken My sorrow — I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone — And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —"

"And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view."

"Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?"

"It is with literature as with law or empire — an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession."

"Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness."

"Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome."

"Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely—flowers."

"If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky."

"Come! let the burial rite be read — the funeral song be sung! — An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young — A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young."

"Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! I feel ye now — I feel ye in your strength."

"Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine — A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine."

"And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams — In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams."

"Convinced myself, I seek not to convince."

"And as, in ethics, Evil is a consequence of Good, so, in fact, out of Joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been."

"There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage, and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind."

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher."

"In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Radiant palace — reared its head."

"This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago."

"While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh — but smile no more."

"A carpet is the soul of an apartment."

"Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve."

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

"Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen —; although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature."

"The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind."

"To observe attentively is to remember distinctly."

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

"While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, "Man", And its hero the Conqueror Worm."

"Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man."

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"

"By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule — From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE — out of TIME."

"With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not — they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind."

"Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love — a simple duty."

"The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled — but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong."

"For the love of God Montresor!"

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."

"Can it be fancied that Deity ever vindictively Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it?"

"There is no oath which seems to me so sacred as that sworn by the all-divine love I bear you. — By this love, then, and by the God who reigns in Heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor — that, with the exception of occasional follies and excesses which I bitterly lament, but to which I have been driven by intolerable sorrow, and which are hourly committed by others without attracting any notice whatever — I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek — or to yours. If I have erred at all, in this regard, it has been on the side of what the world would call a Quixotic sense of the honorable — of the chivalrous."

"Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path."

"Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado."

"Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, — "If you seek for Eldorado!"

"You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream."

"O God! Can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?"

"Thank Heaven! the crisis — The danger is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last — And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last."

"Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells."

"Hear the mellow wedding bells Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight!"

"As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester — and this is my last jest."

"I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result."

"These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities — of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect (like mine," I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose,) "to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it."

"Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see."

"When I think of the long twenty-one years that I have called you father, and you have called me son, I cry like a child to think that it should all end in this."

"Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest."

"So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down."

"And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence."

"In this boat we were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks in the world."

"I now feel it impossible to realize the full extent of the misery which I endured."

"Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality."

"In no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce inferences with entire certainty, even from the most simple data."

"– a narrative, let me here say, which, in its latter portions, will be found to include incidents of a nature so entirely out of the range of human experience, and for this reason so far beyond the limits of human credulity, that I proceed in utter hopelessness of obtaining credence for all that I shall tell, yet confidently trusting in time and progressing science to verify some of the most important and most improbable of my statements."

"My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown."

"A large mirror,—so at first it seemed to me in my confusion—now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait."

"Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist—it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment—not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own!"

"It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said:"

"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead—dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."

"TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?"

"Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever."

"And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses? -- now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage."

"If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs."

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

"For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul."

"There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man."

"I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence."

"One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!"

"Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart — one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?"

"Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates — the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers."

"It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night — and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!"

"For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!"

"If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered."

"After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment."

"A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this — that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made, not to understand, but to feel, as crime."

"If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize at one effort the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own — the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple — a few plain words — "My Heart Laid Bare." But — this little book must be true to its title."

"How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!"

"In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own."

"I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows."

"Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term "Art," I should call it "the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul." The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of "Artist"."

"I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it."

"That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward."

"The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information, by throwing in the reader's way piles of lumber in which he must painfully grope for the scraps of useful matter, peradventure interspersed."

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."

"Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor."

"Sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore."

"And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before."

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."

"Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,— Perched, and sat, and nothing more."

"Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

""Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!"

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door."

"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore!"

"since the interest of an analysis or reconstruction, such as I have considered a desideratum, is quite independent of any real or fancied interest in the thing analysed, it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum on my part to show the modus operandi by which some one of my own works was put together."

"Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem."

"Now the object Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable to a certain extent in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose."

"The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover."

"The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere — The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year."

"Here once, through an alley Titanic, Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul — Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul."

"Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, And tempted her out of her gloom."

"It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; — And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me."

"I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love — I and my Annabel Lee — With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven Coveted her and me."

"But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we — Of many far wiser than we — And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee"

"And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride, In her sepulcher there by the sea — In her tomb by the sounding sea."

"A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul."

"I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms. I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length."

"There neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified — more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — this poem which is a poem and nothing more — this poem written solely for the poem's sake."

"I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth."

"All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry!"

"The best things in life make you sweaty"

"Sleep. Those little slices of death. How I loathe them."

"We see that in Edgar Allen Poe's "Annabelle Lee."...we see that love sometimes suffocates, sometimes smothers in an attempt to keep the beloved."

"I started writing when I was mute. I always thought I could write because I loved to read so much. I loved the melody of Poe and I loved Paul Laurence Dunbar. I had memorized so much of Dunbar, Poe, Shakespeare, James Weldon Johnson, Longfellow. When my son was able to be quiet enough to listen, I taught him those poets. A few years ago he gave a reading of his poetry and he started the reading by saying "First, let me recite to you some of the poets my mother raised me on...""

"Edgar Allan Poe, whom I admire enormously, set a model for the American short story which is very tough to break. He is the one who established that the traditional short story has to be like this...The fantastic, as Poe understood it, deals with the subconscious, with the nearness of madness. Our vision is altered, much like what the Surrealists believed, and we see things in a different way. But that doesn't mean they exist this way in the outside world. In magical realism miracles do happen, and our literature takes part in them."

"Don't forget books. What would life be without them? Emily Brontë, Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, William Faulkner. Read the greats-they're great for a reason. They know how to chart the human soul. (p 32)"

"An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection. Baudelaire thought him a profound philosopher, the neglect of whose golden utterances stamped his native land with infamy. Nevertheless, Poe was vastly the greater charlatan of the two, as well as the greater genius."

"Most literary agents advise young writers to avoid writing short stories. [...] If Edgar Allen Poe were alive today, his agent would constantly slapping him upside the head with tightly rolled copies of his brilliant short stories and novelettes, yelling, "Full-length novels, you moron! Pay attention! What's the matter with you -- are you shooting heroin or something? Write for the market! No more of this middlelength 'Fall of the House of Usher' crap!""

"He was an adventurer into the vaults and cellars and horrible underground passages of the human soul. He sounded the horror and the warning of his own doom."

"Poe, who was fortunate in little else, was almost without exception fortunate in his foreign interpreters-the rarest good luck to befall poets. That the French acclaimed his genius long before it was recognized by his fellow countrymen-if, indeed, we may say we have ever recognized it—was due as much to Baudelaire's sympathetic and haunting versions of his poems as to the beauty of the originals. Poe's Spanish interpreter and occasional translator, José Asunción Silva, was, no less than Baudelaire, qualified by tragic experience of life as well as by sympathy and surpassing ability to embody in liquid and lingering Castilian the conception of poetry that was to help in altering to some extent the South American picture of the United States as a land where genius could not exist. To some extent only, unfortunately, for whenever a norteamericanófilo-a creature as rare as the name-has cited Poe as an example of what we might rise to artistically, there has always been a chorus ready to shout, with discouraging truthfulness, "Yes, but they let him die in beggarly obscurity!" Poe is much more alive today south of the Rio Grande than in Virginia or New York: more loved, more reverenced, more often read and beyond comparison more often quoted-both as to his poetry and his theory of poetry."

"There comes Poe, with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge."

"Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens."

"Poe...was perhaps the first great nonstop literary drinker of the American nineteenth century. He made the indulgences of Coleridge and De Quincey seem like a bit of mischief in the kitchen with the cooking sherry."

"Almost without the first sign of moral principle, or of the concrete and its heroisms, or the simpler affections of the heart, Poe's verses illustrate an intense faculty for technical and abstract beauty, with the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity towards nocturnal themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page—and, by final judgment, belong among the electric lights of imaginative literature, brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat."

"It is to save our faces that we've given him [Poe] a crazy reputation, a writer from whose classic accuracies we have not known how else to escape."

"Poe gives the sense for the first time in America, that literature is serious, not a matter of courtesy but of truth."

"I do not know why you or indeed anybody should want to illustrate Poe. ... I admire a few lyrics of his extremely and a few pages of his prose, chiefly in his critical essays, which are sometimes profound. The rest of him seems to be vulgar and commonplace."

"Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can't sing, I call a poem."

"Because Dickens and Dostoyevsky and Woody Guthrie were telling their stories much better than I ever could, I decided to stick to my own mind."

"There's no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there's only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics. They has got nothing to do with it. I'm thinking about the general people and when they get hurt."

"I am a writer an a singer of the words I write I am no speaker nor any politician an my songs speak for me because I write them in the confinement of my own mind an have t cope with no one except my own self."

"do Not create anything, it will be misinterpreted. it will not change. it will follow you the rest of your life."

"a poem is a naked person . . . some people say that I am a poet"

"He's a pinboy. He also wears suspenders. He's a real person. You know him, but not by that name... I saw him come into the room one night and he looked like a camel. He proceeded to put his eyes in his pocket. I asked this guy who he was and he said, "That's Mr. Jones." Then I asked this cat, "Doesn't he do anything but put his eyes in his pocket?" And he told me, "He puts his nose on the ground." It's all there, it's a true story."

"You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist."

"I find it easy to write songs. I been writing songs for a long time and the words to the songs aren't written out just for the paper; they're written as you can read it, you dig. If you take whatever there is to the song away—the beat, the melody—I could still recite it. I see nothing wrong with songs you can't do that with either—songs that, if you took the beat and the melody away, they wouldn't stand up because they're not supposed to do that, you know. Songs are songs."

"I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know there are some people terrified of the bomb, but there are others terrified to be seen carrying a Modern Screen magazine. Experience teaches that silence terrifies the most."

"Reporter: How many people who labor in the same musical vineyard in which you toil - how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the, uh, social state in which we live today: the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be. Bob Dylan: Um...how many? Reporter: Yes. How many? Bob Dylan: Uh, I think there's about, uh...136. Reporter: You say about 136, or you mean exactly 136? Bob Dylan: Uh, it's either 136 or 142."

"Bob Dylan: I do know what my songs are about. Playboy: And what's that? Bob Dylan: Oh, some are about four minutes; some are about five, and some, believe it or not, are about eleven or twelve."

"Colleges are like old-age homes; except for the fact that more people die in colleges."

"I don't believe you! You're a liar! ... Play it fucking loud!"

"Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb."

"God, I'm glad I'm not me."

"You have to be let alone to really accomplish anything."

"I used to think that myself and my songs were the same thing. But I don't believe that any more. There's myself and there's my song, which I hope is everybody's song."

"My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record."

"Greed and lust I can understand, but I can't understand the values of definition and confinement. Definition destroys. Besides, there's nothing definite in this world."

"Ron Rosenbaum: Why are you doing what you're doing? Bob Dylan: [Pause] Because I don't know anything else to do. I'm good at it. Ron Rosenbaum: How would you describe "it"? Bob Dylan: I'm an artist. I try to create art."

"I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet."

"Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?"

"I kinda live where I find myself."

"I think women rule the world, and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do."

"I wanted just a song to sing, and there came a certain point where I couldn't sing anything. So I had to write what I wanted to sing 'cos nobody else was writing what I wanted to sing."

"At certain times I read a lot of poetry. My favorite poets are Shelley and Keats. Rimbaud is so identifiable. Lord Byron. I don't know. Lately if I read poems, it's like I can always hear the guitar. Even with Shakespeare's sonnets I can hear a melody because it's all broken up into timed phrases so I hear it. I always keep thinking, 'What kind of song would this be?'"

"Chaos is a friend of mine."

"I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom."

"If the songs are dreamed, it's like my voice is coming out of their dream."

"I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet. Anybody who could possibly call himself a poet just cannot be a poet."

"When I first heard Elvis's voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss. He is the deity supreme of rock and roll religion as it exists in today's form. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. I think for a long time that freedom to me was Elvis singing 'Blue Moon of Kentucky.' I thank God for Elvis."

"The first two lines, which rhymed 'kiddin' you' and 'didn't you,' just about knocked me out, and later on, when I got to the jugglers and the chrome horse and the princess on the steeple, it all just about got to be too much."

"It's not to anybody's best interest to think about how they will be perceived tomorrow. It hurts you in the long run."

"My sense of rhyme used to be more involved in my songwriting than it is... Still staying in the unconscious frame of mind, you can pull yourself out and throw up two rhymes first and work it back. You get the rhymes first and work it back and then see if you can make it make sense in another kind of way. You can still stay in the unconscious frame of mind to pull it off, which is the state of mind you have to be in anyway."

"People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around — the music and the ideas."

"That ear - I mean, Jesus, he's got to will that to the Smithsonian."

"Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else."

"I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time. It doesn't even matter to me."

"I'm inconsistent, even to myself."

"Bob Dylan: The media is all-pervasive. What can a writer think of to write that you don't see every day in a newspaper or on television? Interviewer: ...Do you think that TV and the media have killed poetry and literature? Bob Dylan: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. ... What's a writer to do if every idea is exposed in the media before he can get to it or let it evolve? What's a writer gonna write about? ... We're living in a science-fiction world. We're living in a world that Disney has conquered. Disney's science fiction. Theme parks, trendy streets, it's all science fiction. So I would say, if a writer has got something to say, he'll have to do it in that– Interviewer: Outside of the real world? Bob Dylan: There is a real world. Science fiction has become the real world. Whether we realize it or not, it has."

"We may not be able to defeat these swine, but we don't have to join them."

"I had ambitions to set out and find, like an odyssey or going home somewhere... set out to find... this home that I'd left a while back and couldn't remember exactly where it was, but I was on my way there. And encountering what I encountered on the way was how I envisioned it all. I didn't really have any ambition at all. I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be, and so, I'm on my way home, you know?"

"I didn't go to classes. I just didn't feel like it."

"An artist has gotta be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's at somewhere. You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming."

"You don't need my autograph. If you needed it, I'd give it to you."

"You can't be wise and in love at the same time."

"I had no answers to any of those questions any more than any other performer did, really. But, you know, that didn't stop the press or people or whoever they were from asking these questions. They, for some reason the press thought that performers had the answers to all these problems in the society and you know, like what can... What can you say to something like that? I mean, it's just kind of absurd."

"I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's."

"Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in St. Paul [Minnesota] in 1959 and it blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my own language."

"I think it's the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I'm more of an adventurous type than a relationship type."

"It's not a character like in a book or a movie. He's not a bus driver. He doesn't drive a forklift. He's not a serial killer. It's me who's singing that, plain and simple. We shouldn't confuse singers and performers with actors. Actors will say, “My character this, and my character that.” Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up and act. You don't have to explain it to me."

"It's peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cellphones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self-identity. It's a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that's got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets."

"The people in my songs are all me."

"A man is successful if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night, and in between does what he likes."

"It wasn't money or love that I was looking for. I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot. My mind was strong like a trap and I didn't need any guarantee of validity."

"I was heading for the fantastic lights. No doubt about it. Could it be that I was being deceived? Not likely. I don't think I had enough imagination to be deceived; had no false hope, either. I'd come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else."

"Morality has nothing in common with politics."

"What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening—all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn't one big joke."

"Opportunities may come along for you to convert something—something that exists into something that didn't yet."

"America was changing. I had a feeling of destiny and I was riding the changes... My consciousness was beginning to change, too, change and stretch."

"I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses."

"I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of."

"I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. I'm in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion."

"Sometimes you say things in songs even if there's a small chance of them being true. And sometimes you say things that have nothing to do with the truth of what you want to say and sometimes you say things that everyone knows to be true. Then again, at the same time, you're thinking that the only truth on earth is that there is no truth on it. Whatever you are saying, you're saying in a ricky-tick way. There's never time to reflect. You stitched and pressed and packed and drove, is what you did."

"I put one on the turntable and when the needle dropped, I was stunned — didn't know if I was stoned or straight... All these songs together, one after another made my head spin. It made me want to gasp. It was like the land parted."

"[Ref Rimbaud line 'Je est un autre,]' “which translates into ‘I is someone else.’ When I read those words the bells went off. It made perfect sense. I wished someone would have mentioned that to me earlier.”"

"The road out would be treacherous, and I didn’t know where it would lead but I followed it anyway. It was a strange world ahead that would unfold, a thunderhead of a world with jagged lightning edges. Many got it wrong and never did get it right. I went straight into it. It was wide open. One thing for sure, not only was it not run by God, but it wasn’t run by the devil either."

"If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I'd have about the same odds as standing on the moon."

"I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn't have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I'm sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: "Who're the right actors for these roles?" "How should this be staged?" "Do I really want to set this in Denmark?" His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. "Is the financing in place?" "Are there enough good seats for my patrons?" "Where am I going to get a human skull?" I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare's mind was the question "Is this literature?""

"As a performer I've played for 50,000 people and I've played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried."

"Like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. "Who are the best musicians for these songs?" "Am I recording in the right studio?" "Is this song in the right key?" Some things never change, even in 400 years. Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?" So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer."

"You sound like a hillbilly; We want folk singers here."

"A lot of people don't have much food on their table But they got a lot of forks and knives And they gotta cut something"

"I'm out here a thousand miles from my home Walkin' a road other men have gone down I'm seein' your world of people and things Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings"

"Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song, 'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born"

"Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Lead Belly too An' to all the good people that traveled with you Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men That come with the dust and are gone with the wind"

"How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?"

"Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?"

"How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn't see?"

"How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?"

"Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?"

"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind."

"So if you're travelin' in the north country fair, Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, Remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine."

"But I see through your eyes"

"All the money you made will never buy back your soul."

"You ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins."

"There is one thing I know though I'm younger than you Even Jesus would not forgive what you do"

"And I hope that you die And your death'll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And I'll stand o'er your grave 'Til I'm sure that you're dead"

"Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one?"

"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it."

"I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken."

"I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world."

"I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'."

"I met a white man who walked a black dog."

"And I'll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it."

"But I'll know my song well before I start singin'."

"It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall."

"It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe If you don't know by now"

"I once loved a woman, a child I am told I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul."

"I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe Where I'm bound, I can't tell But goodbye's too good a word, babe So I'll just say fare thee well"

"I ain't saying you treated me unkind You could have done better but I don't mind You just kinda wasted my precious time But don't think twice, it's all right."

"I got into the driver's seat and drove down 42nd Street in my Cadillac. Good car to drive after a war."

"Half of the people can be part right all of the time, Some of the people can be all right part of the time, But all the people can't be all right all the time. I think Abraham Lincoln said that. I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours. I said that."

"Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown. And accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin'."

"Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who that it's naming.’ For the loser now will be later to win"

"Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don't criticize What you can't understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly agin'."

"Come Congressmen, Senators, please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall For he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled There’s a battle outside and it's ragin’."

"You prayed to the Lord above Oh please send you a friend Your empty pockets tell yuh That you ain't a-got no friend"

"There's seven people dead On a South Dakota farm Somewhere in the distance There's seven new people born"

"If there's anyone who knows, is there anyone who cares?"

"You never ask questions When God's on your side"

"You don't count the dead When God's on your side"

"But I can't think for you You'll have to decide Whether Judas Iscariot Had God on his side"

"The words fill my head, and fall to the floor, that if God's on our side, he'll stop the next war."

"Oh all the money that in my whole life I did spend Be it mine right or wrongfully I let it slip gladly past the hands of my friends To tie up the time most forcefully"

"But if the arrow is straight And the point is slick It can pierce through dust no matter how thick"

"Oh, but if I had the stars from the darkest night And the diamonds from the deepest ocean I'd forsake them all for your sweet kiss For that's all I'm wishin' to be ownin'."

"Well, if you, my love, must think that-a-way, I'm sure your mind is roamin'. I'm sure your heart is not with me, But with the country to where you're goin'."

"William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll With a cane that he twirled around his Diamond ring finger At a Baltimore hotel society gath‘rin‘ And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him As they rode him in custody down to the station And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears Take the rag away from your face Now ain‘t the time for your tears."

"William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him And high office relations in the politics of Maryland Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears Take the rag away from your face Now ain‘t the time for your tears."

"Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage And never sat once at the head of the table And didn‘t even talk to the people at the table Who just cleande up all the food from the table And emptied the ashtrays in a whole other level Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane That sailed through the air and came down through the room Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears Take the rag away from your face Now ain‘t the time for your tears."

"In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gravel To show that all‘s equal and that the courts are on the level And the strings in the books ain‘t pulled and persuaded And that even the nobles get properly handled Once that the cops have chased after and caught ´em And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom Stared at the person who killed for no reason Who just happened to be feelin‘ that way without warnin‘ And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears Bury the rag deep in your face For now‘s the time for your tears."

"All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you."

"I ain't looking for you to feel like me, see like me, or be like me."

"Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll, We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing. As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds, Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing. Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight, Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight, An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night, An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing."

"Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail, The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder, That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind, Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind, An' the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing."

"It ain't no use a-talking to me It's just the same as talking to you"

"I'm a poet, and I know it."

"Everything passes Everything changes Just do what you think you should do And someday maybe Who knows, baby I'll come and be cryin' to you"

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

"Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth "Rip down all hate," I screamed Lies that life is black and white Spoke from my skull."

"In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach Fearing not that I'd become my enemy in the instant that I preach My existence led by confusion boats, mutiny from stern to bow."

"I had to say something to strike him very weird so I yelled out "I like Fidel Castro and his beard.""

"All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight. I gagged twice, doubled, tears blinding my sight. My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night Leaving all of love's ashes behind me. The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet. The words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet. I think of her often and hope whoever she's met Will be fully aware of how precious she is. Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me, "How good, how good does it feel to be free?" And I answer them most mysteriously, "Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?""

"Go away from my window, Leave at your own chosen speed, I'm not the one you want, babe, I'm not the one you need. You say you're looking for someone, Who's never weak but always strong, To protect you and defend you, Whether you are right or wrong, Someone to open each and every door, But it ain't me, babe, No, no, no, it ain't me, babe, It ain't me you're looking for, babe."

"Johnny's in the basement Mixing up the medicine I'm on the pavement Thinking about the government The man in the trenchcoat Badge out, laid off Says he's got a bad cough Wants to get it paid off Look out kid It's somethin' you did God knows when But you're doin' it again"

"You don't need a weather man To know which way the wind blows"

"Get jailed, jump bail Join the army, if you fail"

"Don't follow leaders Watch the parkin' meters"

"Twenty years of schoolin' And they put you on the day shift"

"The pump don't work 'Cause the vandals took the handles"

"She's got everything she needs, she's an artist, she don't look back."

"She could take the dark out the nighttime and paint the daytime black."

"You will start out standing, proud to steal her anything she sees, but you will wind up peeking through her keyhole down upon your knees."

"Well, I try my best To be just like I am But everybody wants you To be just like them"

"I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more."

"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."

"She knows too much to argue or to judge."

"In the dime stores and bus stations, People talk of situations, Read books repeat quotations, Draw conclusions on the wall."

"Don't ask me nothin' about nothin'. I just might tell you the truth."

"I said, "You know they refused Jesus, too" He said, "You're not Him""

"The ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming."

"And if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme..."

"It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run"

"Take me disappearing, through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time..."

"Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free."

"With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow."

"Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me. I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to. Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me. In the jingle-jangle morning, I'll come following you."

"All and all can only fall with a crushing but meaningless blow."

"And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden."

"Of war and peace the truth just twist, its curfew gull it glides."

"Darkness at the break of noon Shadows even the silver spoon The handmade blade, the child's balloon Eclipses both the sun and moon To understand you know too soon There is no sense in trying"

"He not busy being born is busy dying"

"Others say, don't hate nothing at all except hatred"

"Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their mark Make everything from toy guns that spark To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It's easy to see without looking too far That not much is really sacred"

"Even the President of the United States Sometimes must have to stand naked"

"It is not he or she or them or it That you belong to."

"While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race choir"

"Money doesn't talk, it swears"

"You must leave, now take what you need, You think will last But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast Yonder stands your orphan with his gun Crying like a fire in the sun."

"The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense."

"Your lover who just walked out the door, has taken all his blankets from your floor."

"Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you. Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you. Strike another match, go! Start anew And it's all over now, Baby Blue."

"You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend. When I was down, you just stood there grinning."

"Do you take me for such a fool to think I'd make contact with one that tries to hide what he don't know to begin with."

"I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You'd know what a drag it is to see you."

"How does it feel? To be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?"

"Once upon a time you dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you. People call, say beware doll, you're bound to fall, you thought they were all, kiddin you."

"You used to laugh about Everybody that was hangin' out Now you don't talk so loud Now you don't seem so proud About having to be scrounging for your next meal"

"You never turned around to see the frowns, on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did, tricks for you."

"Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people, they're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made"

"Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse. When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose. You're invisible now. You've got no secrets to conceal."

"The sweet pretty things are in bed now, of course."

"The sun's not yellow, it's chicken."

"Stop all this weeping, swallow your pride, you will not die, it's not poison"

"The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone Causes Galileo's math book to get thrown At Delilah's who sitting worthlessly alone But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter"

"And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul To the old folks home and the college"

"Well I ride on a mail train baby, can't buy a thrill."

"Don't the moon look good, mama, shinin' through the trees? Don't the brakeman look good, mama, flaggin' down the double E? Don't the sun look good goin' down over the sea?"

"And you say, Oh my God, am I here all alone?"

"You've been with the professors and they've all liked your looks. With great lawyers you've discussed lepers and crooks."

"You go watch the geek, who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak, and says, how does it feel to be such a freak?, and you say, impossible as he hands you a bone."

"And something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?"

"Here's your throat back, thanks for the loan."

"You put your eyes in your pockets and your nose on the ground."

"They already expect you to just give a check to tax-deductible charity organization."

"Oh God said to Abraham, Kill me a son. Abe says, Man, you must be puttin' me on. God say, No. Abe say, What? God say, You can do what you want Abe, but the next time you see me comin' you better run. Well Abe says, Where do you want this killin' done? God says, Out on Highway 61."

"The cops don't need you, and, man, they expect the same."

"I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff."

"They're selling postcards of the hanging"

"Yes, I received your letter yesterday (About the time the door knob broke) When you asked how I was doing Was that some kind of joke? All these people that you mention Yes, I know them, they're quite lame I had to rearrange their faces And give them all another name Right now I can't read too good Don't send me no more letters no Not unless you mail them From Desolation Row"

"Now at midnight all the agents And the superhuman crew Come out and round up everyone That knows more than they do"

"The Titanic sails at dawn"

"And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot Fighting in the captain's tower While calypso singers laugh at them And fishermen hold flowers..."

"Ron Rosenbaum: When you hear your songs in your mind, it's not just you strumming alone, you mean?"

"Dylan: Well, no, it is to begin with. But then I always hear other instruments, how they should sound. The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up. That's my particular sound. I haven't been able to succeed in getting it all the time. Mostly, I've been driving at a combination of guitar, harmonica and organ, but now I find myself going into territory that has more percussion in it and [pause] rhythms of the soul."

"But I would not feel so all alone, everybody must get stoned!"

"Somebody got lucky, but it was an accident."

"Oh Mama, can this really be the end? To be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again?"

"And here I sit so patiently waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice."

"The one was Texas medicine, the other was just a railroad gin. And, like a fool, I mixed them; and it strangled up my mind."

"Your debutante just knows what you need, but I know what you want."

"You see, you're just like me. I hope you're satisfied."

"Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet?"

"We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it."

"He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all"

"Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial. Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles"

"The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face."

"Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him."

"But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel."

"She is good to me And there's nothing she doesn't see She knows where I'd like to be But it doesn't matter"

"Well, I see you got your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat Yes, I see you got your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat Well, you must tell me, baby How your head feels under somethin' like that Under your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat"

"I asked the doctor if I could see you It's bad for your health, he said Well, I disobeyed his orders, I came to see you but I found him there instead Well, I don't mind him cheating on me but I sure wish he'd take that off his head Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat"

"She takes just like a woman, yes she does She makes love just like a woman, yes she does And she aches just like a woman But she breaks just like a little girl."

"You say you love me and you're thinking of me, but you know you might be wrong."

"But to live outside the law, you must be honest."

"And now here I stand, looking at your yellow railroad, in the ruins of your balcony"

"Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands, Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes, My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums, Should I leave them by your gate, Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?"

"With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace, And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace, And your basement clothes and your hollow face, Who among them can think he could outguess you?"

""There must be some way out of here," said the Joker to the Thief"

"All along the watchtower, princes kept the view While all the women came and went, barefoot servants too Outside in the distance, a wild cat did growl Two riders were approaching. The wind began to howl."

"I put my fingers against the glass, and bowed my head and cried"

"Nothing is revealed"

"Lay, lady, lay. Lay across my big, brass bed."

"Whatever colors you have in your mind, I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine."

"His clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean, and you're the best thing that he's ever seen."

"Throw my ticket out the window, Throw my suitcase out there too, Throw my troubles out the door, I don't need them anymore, 'Cause tonight I'll be staying here with you."

"Ev'rybody's in despair, Ev'ry girl and boy But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, Ev'rybody's gonna jump for joy."

"Come all without, come all within, You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn."

"Time passes slowly up here in the mountains"

"Some day everything is gonna be different, when I paint my masterpiece."

"May you build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung. May your song always be sung, May you stay forever young."

"May your hands always be busy. May your feet always be swift. May you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift. May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung. May you stay forever young."

"Early one mornin' the sun was shinin', I was layin' in bed Wond'rin'if she'd changed at all If her hair was still red."

"Tangled up in blue..."

"Lord knows I've paid some dues gettin' through..."

"I helped her out of a jam, I guess, but I used a little too much force..."

"And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burnin' coal. Pourin' off of every page, like it was written in my soul from me to you..."

"The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew..."

"All the people we used to know, they're an illusion to me now..."

"Don't know how it all got started, I don't know what they do with their lives..."

"We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view..."

"But all the while I was alone The past was close behind, I seen a lot of women But she never escaped my mind,"

"I lived with them on Montague Street In a basement down the stairs There was music in the cafes at night And revolution in the air."

"You're an idiot, babe. It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe."

"I can't help it if I'm lucky."

"Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are makin' me see stars."

"I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned slowly into autumn."

"Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats, blowing through the letters that we wrote. Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves, We're idiots, babe. It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves."

"It was gravity which pulled us in and destiny which broke us apart"

"You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn't enough to change my heart"

"Down the highway, down the tracks, down the road to ecstacy, I followed you beneath the stars, hounded by your memory and all your ragin' glory"

"You'll never know the hurt I suffer, nor the pain I rise above, and I'll never know the same about you..."

"I kiss good-bye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me."

"I'm going out of my mind, oh, oh; with a pain that stops and starts; like a corkscrew to my heart; Ever since we've been apart"

"A change in the weather is known to be extreme; but what's the sense in changing horses in mid-stream?"

"Time is a jetplane — it moves too fast. Oh but what a shame that all we've shared can't last..."

"Love is so simple, to quote a phrase; you've known it all the time, I'm learnin' it these days."

"I know where I can find you — in somebody's room. It's the price I have to pay, you're a big girl all the way."

"Backstage the girls were playin' five-card stud by the stairs, Lily had two queens, she was hopin' for a third to match her pair. Outside the streets were fillin' up, the window was open wide, A gentle breeze was blowin', you could feel it from inside. Lily called another bet and drew up the Jack of Hearts."

"'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue, the road was full of mud. I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form, 'Come in,' she said, 'I'll give you shelter from the storm.'"

"Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine."

"Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm..."

"I always have respected her for doin' what she did and gettin' free"

"Say for me that I'm all right though things get kind of slow She might think that I've forgotten her don't tell her it isn't so."

"Sundown yellow moon I replay the past I know every scene by heart they all went by so fast"

"If she's passing back this way I'm not that hard to find Tell her she can look me up if she's got the time."

"Well, it's sugar for sugar And salt for salt If you go down in the flood It's gonna be your own fault"

"Take care of all your memories. said my friend Mick, For you cannot relive them."

"If your mem'ry serves you well, we were gonna meet again and wait, so I think I'll just unpack my bags and sit before it gets too late. No man alive will come to you with another tale to tell, but you know that we shall meet again, if your mem'ry serves you well."

"If your memory serves you well, I was gonna confiscate your lace and wrap it up in a sailor's knot and hide it in your case. And if I knew for sure that it was yours, it was oh so hard to tell, and you know that we shall meet again, if your memory serves you well."

"If your memory serves you well, I remember you're the one who called out me to call out them to get your business done. And after every plan has failed, and there was nothing left to tell, well you knew that we shall meet again if your memory serves you well."

"Wheels on fire, rolling down the road, best notify my next of kin, this wheel shall explode!"

"Here comes the story of The Hurricane, the man the authorities came to blame for something that he never done. Put in a prison cell, but one time he coulda been the champion of the world."

"Meanwhile, far away in another part of town, Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin’ around. Number one contender for the middleweight crown, Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down. When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road, Just like the time before and the time before that. In Paterson that’s just the way things go: If you’re black you might as well not show up on the street ’Less you wanna draw the heat."

"Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land, where justice is a game."

"There's lots of pretty girls in Mozambique."

"Don't turn away, you'll create sorrow, Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore, You may not see me tomorrow."

"Gentlemen, he said I don't need your organization, I've shined your shoes I've moved your mountains and marked your cards But Eden is burning either get ready for elimination Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards Peace will come with tranquility and splendor on the wheels of fire But will offer no reward when her false idols fall And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating Between the King and the Queen of Swords"

"Señor, señor, can you tell me where we’re heading? Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?"

"Do you love me, or are you just extending good will?"

"I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings, and I've never been too impressed"

"It may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody."

"You may call me Bobby; you may call me Zimmy..."

"Now there's spiritual warfare, flesh and blood breaking down. You either got faith or you got unbelief, and there ain't no neutral ground."

"The enemy is subtle. How be it we're deceived? When the truth's in our hearts and we still don't believe."

"My so-called friends have fallen under a spell: they look me squarely in the eye and say, "Well; all is well.""

"We are covered in blood, girl. You know both our forefathers were slaves. Let us hope they've found mercy in their bone-filled graves."

"They'd like to drive me from this town; they don't want me around, 'cause I believe in you."

"I believe in you even on the morning after."

"Have they counted the cost it'll take to bring down all the earthly principles they're gonna have to abandon?"

"All that foreign oil controlling American soil. Look around you, it's just bound to make you embarrassed: sheiks walking around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings, deciding America's future from Amsterdam and to Paris."

"In the home of the brave, Jefferson turning over in his grave."

"Man's ego's inflated, his laws are outdated. They don't apply no more. You can't rely no more to be standing around waiting."

"Fools glorify themselves, trying to manipulate Satan."

"The enemy I see wears a cloak of decency."

"People starving and thirsting; grain elevators are bursting. You know, it costs more to store the food than it do to give it."

"They talk about a life of brotherly love? Show me someone who knows how to live it."

"It sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets."

"(Alternate version.) A brave man will kill you with a sword, a coward with a kiss."

"Don't wanna judge nobody — don't wanna be judged."

"You got some big dreams, baby, but in order to dream you gotta still be asleep."

"Counterfeit philosophies have polluted all of your thoughts; Karl Marx has got you by the throat, and Henry Kissinger's got you tied up into knots."

"You got innocent men in jail, your insane asylums are filled."

"Do you ever wonder just what God requires? You think he's just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires."

"They tell you "Time is money," as if your life was worth its weight in gold."

"When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?"

"Truth is an arrow, and the gate is narrow that it passes through."

"In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand"

"I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand"

"Freedom just around the corner for you, but with truth so far off, what good will it do?"

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, both of their futures so full of dread."

"Shedding off one more layer of skin, keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within."

"You go to Sodom and Gomorrah, but what do you care? Ain't nobody there would want to marry your sister."

"You look into the fiery furnace, see the rich man without any name."

"The book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers."

"The rifleman's stalking the sick and the lame; preacherman seeks the same. Who'll get there first is uncertain."

"A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet. He'll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat, take the motherless children off the street and place them at the feet of a harlot."

"A woman like you should be at home. That's where you belong, taking care of somebody nice who don't know how to do you wrong."

"Just how much abuse will you be able to take? Well, there's no way to tell by the first kiss."

"They say in your father's house there's many mansions; each one of 'em got a fireproof floor."

"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings."

"Steal a little and they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you king."

"There's only one step down from here, baby. It's called the Land of Permanent Bliss."

"Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace."

"Nobody sees through him — no, not even the chief of police."

"He could be standing next to you, the person that you notice least."

"He's following a star, the same one that the three men followed east."

"Some one else is speaking with my mouth, but I'm listening only to my heart."

"Took a stranger to teach me to look into justice's beautiful face, and to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

"A lot of people complaining that there is no work. I say, "Why you say that for?" When nothin' you got is US-made — they don't make nothin' here no more."

"Capitalism is above the law; it's said it don't count 'less it sells."

"It's sundown on the union that was made in the USA. Sure was a good idea till greed got in the way."

"Democracy don't rule the world; you'd better get that in your head. This world is ruled by violence."

"Yesterday's just a memory; tomorrow's never what it's supposed to be."

"Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth, he can do with it as he please. And if things don't change soon, he will."

"For man has invented his doom; first step was touching the moon."

"Man is opposed to fair play: he wants it all, and he wants it his way."

"What looks large from a distance, close up ain't never that big."

"I live in another world, where life and death are memorized."

"I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise, whom Nature's beast fears as they come."

"Time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies."

"All I see are dark eyes."

"If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself."

"I've been deceived by the clown inside of me. I thought that he was righteous but he's vain."

"My patron saint is a-fighting with a ghost. He's always off somewhere when I need him most."

"Let me feel your love one more time before I abandon it."

"I was just too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity."

"If I thought about it, I never would have done it, I guess I would have let it slide."

"The old Rounder in the iron mask slipped me the master key, somebody had to unlock your heart, he said it was up to me."

"It frightens me the awful truth of how sweet life can be."

"When you bite off more than you can chew, you pay the penalty, somebody's got to tell the tale, I guess it must be up to me."

"Somebody's got to cry some tears, I guess it must be up to me."

"Forgive me, baby, for what I didn't do."

"[Recounting a scene in The Gunfighter] Turn him loose, let him go, let him say he outdrew me fair and square — I want him to feel what it's like to every moment face his death."

"I can't believe we've lived so long and are still so far apart."

"I know she ain't you, but she's here, and she's got that dark rhythm in her soul."

"She said, "Welcome to the land of the living dead," but you could tell she was so brokenhearted — she said, "Even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt.""

"We're going all the way, till the wheels fall off and burn, till the sun peels the paint and the seat covers fade and the water moccasins die."

"I didn't know whether to duck or to run, so I ran."

"When I saw you break down in front of the judge and cry real tears, it was the best damn thing I saw anybody do."

"I've always been the kind of person who doesn't like to trespass, but sometimes you just find yourself over the line."

"I feel pretty good, but that ain't saying much — I could feel a whole lot better, if you were just here by my side to show me how."

"The only thing we knew for sure about Henry Porter was that his name wasn't Henry Porter."

"Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than those who are most content."

"You always said people don't do what they believe in; they just do what's most convenient, then they repent."

"Tweeter and the Monkey Man were hard up for cash They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash To an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan Who for reasons unexplained she loved the Monkey Man"

"Jan had told him many times "it was you to me who taught: in Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught""

"We live in a political world Where peace is not welcome at all It's turned away from the door to wander some more Or put up against the wall."

"Ring them bells Sweet Martha For the poor man's son Ring them bells so the world will know That God is one Oh, the shepherd is asleep Where the willows weep And the mountains are filled with lost sheep."

"There are no mistakes in life, some people say And it's true, sometimes you can see it that way People don't live or die, people just float She went with the man in the long black coat."

"There’s smoke on the water, it’s been there since June Tree trunks uprooted, 'neath the high crescent moon Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force Somebody is out there beating on a dead horse"

"Seen a shooting star tonight, and I thought of you."

"They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down."

"Your mind is your temple, keep it beautiful and free. Don't let an egg get laid in it by something you can't see."

"Let me die in my footsteps before I go under the ground."

"I'd throw all the guns and the tanks in the sea, for they are mistakes of a past history."

"The whole world's a bottle, And life's but a dram, When the bottle gets empty, It sure ain't worth a damn."

"When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?"

"Well, God is in His heaven And we all want what's his But power and greed and corruptible seed Seem to be all that there is I'm gazing out the window Of the St. James Hotel And I know no one can sing the blues Like Blind Willie McTell"

"Drinkin' man listens to the voice he hears, In a crowded room full of covered up mirrors, Lookin' into the lost forgotten years For dignity"

"I'm sick of love, and I'm in the thick of it."

"Last night I danced with a stranger, but she just reminded me you were the one."

"Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain"

"I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from."

"I been down on the bottom of a whirlpool of lies"

"Don't even hear the murmur of a prayer. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."

"I could hold you for a million years"

"When you think that you’ve lost everything, you find out you can always lose a little more."

"She says, you don’t read women authors do you?... I said, You’re way wrong. She says, Which ones have you read then? I say, I read Erica Jong!"

"Insanity is crashing up against my soul."

"Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet... Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street."

"People are crazy and times are strange I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range, I used to care, but things have changed."

"You can hurt someone and not even know it"

"I been walkin forty miles of bad road. If the Bible is right the world will explode. I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can"

"My clothes are wet, tight on my skin. Not as tight as the corner that I've painted myself in."

"You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way."

"I'm walking through the leaves falling from the trees, Feelin' like a stranger nobody sees."

"So many things that we never will undo I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too."

"I'm drownin' in the poison, got not future got no past."

"But my heart is not weary; it's light and it's free I've got nothing but affection for those who've sailed with me."

"Everybody movin', if they ain't already there. Everyboy got to move somewhere."

"Things should start to get interesting right about now."

"Politician's got on his jogging shoes, he must be running for office, got no time to lose"

"I'm sittin' on my watch so I can be on time."

"The future for me is already a thing of the past."

"I'm gonna baptize you in fire so you can sin no more."

"Funny how the things you have the hardest time parting with are the things you need the least."

"I'm gonna spare the defeated—I'm gonna speak to the crowd I'm gonna spare the defeated, boys, I'm going to speak to the crowd I am goin' to teach peace to the conquered I'm gonna tame the proud"

"Down over the window Comes the dazzling sunlit rays Through the back alleys, through the blinds Another one of them endless days"

"My old man he's like some feudal lord, got more lives than a cat."

"Jump into the wagon, love, throw your panties overboard."

"I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind."

"As great as you are, man, you’ll never be greater than yourself."

"Don’t reach out for me, she said. Can’t you see I’m drowning too?"

"Last night across the alley there was a pounding on the wall It must have been Don Pascuale making a two a.m. booty call"

"Gonna forget about myself for a while, gonna go out and see what others need."

"Feel like my soul is beginning to expand. Look into my heart and you will sort of understand."

"The world of research has gone berserk. Too much paperwork."

"Some people never work a day in their lives, don't know what work even means."

"If I catch my opponents ever sleepin', I'll just slaughter 'em where they lie."

"I'm listening to Billy Joe Shaver And I'm reading James Joyce Some people they tell me I've got the blood of the land in my voice"

"The door has closed for evermore, If indeed there ever was a door."

"Just give to me my gravestone With it clearly carved upon: "I'm a long time a-comin' An' I'll be a long time gone""

"She left one too many a boy behind He committed suicide"

"It's soon after midnight, and I got a date with a fairy queen"

"Another politician pumpin' out the piss."

"He bent in the middle like a twisted pin"

"Long before the First Crusade, way back before England or America was made."

"Mr. Freud with his dreams, Mr. Marx with his ax."

"Who cleared the path for Presley to sing Who carved out the path for Martin Luther King"

"I lit the torch, I looked to the east, and I crossed the Rubicon."

"I’m so deep in love that I can hardly see."

"Well, it might not be the thing to do, but I’m sticking with you through and through."

"Bob Dylan's enormous influence on mid-'60s rock not only led directly to the birth of folk rock but also inspired the psychedelic rockers who followed."

"He might rarely pick up a six-string these days, but back in the day, Dylan started a folk revolution with nothing but a beat-up old acoustic and a suitcase full of songs. Dylan made it look so easy that a legion of earnest young strummers picked up the guitar. They discovered the truth when they started trying to play like him, though. Elaborate fingerpicking, open tunings, ear-catching runs and an impeccable sense of rhythm were the foundation that the Dylan legend was built on. He sourced his skills from legends of folk and blues, and combined them into something bitingly original. Hands down the best singer-songwriter ever to do it."

"It took Bob Dylan to break the ice between the [country and rock music] camps. [...] While it would be a stretch to call Blonde on Blonde a country-rock record, the fact that Dylan, arguably the most important person in rock at the time, cut an album in the home of country music soon brought an influx of other musicians to Nashville. As Charlie McCoy, the multi-instrumentalist who starred on Blonde told Nashville Scene in 2011, “That's when the floodgates opened.""

"The Nobel Prize for Literature is yet another step towards immortality for Bob Dylan. The rebellious, reclusive, unpredictable artist/composer is exactly where the Nobel Prize for Literature needs to be. His gift with words is unsurpassable. Out of my repertoire spanning 60 years, no songs have been more moving and worthy in their depth, darkness, fury, mystery, beauty and humour than Bob's. None has been more of a pleasure to sing. None will come again."

"A voice like sand and glue."

"To me, [giving the Nobel Prize to Bob Dylan] is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain."

"I relied on Bob Dylan as a seer who literally channeled the mood of the revolution. His John Wesley Harding album, named for a famous outlaw, had thrilled me the year before, especially "All Along the Watchtower," which seemed to me a coda for revolution. Some of the women in our group and many in the new women's movement had turned against Dylan and other artists for their misogyny, and I couldn't deny its presence in many lyrics."

"In the mid-'60s one of my cousins gave me a record by Bob Dylan and it was a mind-blowing experience. I loved the beat of it, the folk concerns, the pulse of the people in Dylan's music."

"Dylan is to me the perfect symbol of the anti-artist in our society. He is against everything—the last resort of someone who doesn't really want to change the world. ... I think his poetry is punk. It's derivative and terribly old hat. ... Dylan songs accept the world as it is."

"Bob Dylan took a lot of air out of the room when it came to songwriters. Everybody had a tough row to hoe distinguishing themselves once Bob invented our job."

"I saw Bob Dylan a couple of weeks ago (this being, what, December 1994?) and he was saying… “Who owns all the money? Who owns the media?”. As he travels around the world, he notices that all the media change their story every week, and someone is directing that. And “Who owns all the money?”, he was saying. And it was like he knew that he had a great deal of power, to influence people’s psyches, or minds, or thinking, or psychology, or opinion-ation, and yet his power was miniscule, compared to the power of the moguls of the media. And in America it’s only 22 people who run… who own… 80 percent of the mass-media, so that the… it would be very difficult for a poem… for a poet… to overcome that barrage of bullshit. On the other hand, poetry is the only place where you get an individual person telling his subjective truth, what he really thinks, as distinct from what he wants people to think he thinks (like a politician or someone preparing an editorial in a dignified newspaper). So if you need the historical truth of what people think inside, you have to follow Shelley (and his admonition is that poets are the “unacknowledged legislators of the race”) — or what William Carlos Williams said more acutely was, “The government is of words”. After all, the people making political speeches, they’re writing prose, if not poetry, and they are trying to get a little flowery language in there, but the language is shifty, and the language is manipulative, and people who are advertising, or even doing ordinary mass-media, are still inhibited and can’t say what they really think, but the poet can say what he really thinks, authentically, and that’s the advantage, and it’s longer-lasting than the immediate radio-broadcast or television-broadcast, because a poem is like a radio that can broadcast continually, for thousands of years. And so, in the long run, it may have an ameliorating effect on the spirit."

"What I wanted to do with Bobby was just to get him to sound in the studio as natural, just as he was in person, and have that extraordinary personality come thru. ... After all, he's not a great harmonica player, and he's not a great guitar player, and he's not a great singer. He just happens to be an original. And I just wanted to have that originality come thru."

"The minute you try to grab hold of Dylan, he's no longer where he was. He's like a flame: If you try to hold him in your hand you'll surely get burned. Dylan's life of change and constant disappearances and constant transformations makes you yearn to hold him, and to nail him down. And that's why his fan base is so obsessive, so desirous of finding the truth and the absolutes and the answers to him — things that Dylan will never provide and will only frustrate. ... Dylan is difficult and mysterious and evasive and frustrating, and it only makes you identify with him all the more as he skirts identity."

"Slight, wiry, his blond, curly hair worn long, Bob Dylan never wears a tie and never lets anyone else make decisions for him. His unshakable independence courses through his songs—some of them wryly irreverent, others harshly critical of what he regards as hypocrisy and cruelty. His voice is acrid but curiously compelling, and he has become the most influential folksinger among today's teenagers—as well as among older dissenters. [...] Now 24, he is less the angry preacher of causes than he was two years ago. His songs have become more warmly personal and more deftly witty. He is cactus on the outside and romantic revolutionary within. He has no ideology except that of inner freedom. He is his own man."

"He had a lovely voice, but he was also, I think, a great poet. And he was the background music to a lot of people of my age. I don't take a lot of stock in generational thought, as you know. I think generational solidarity is the lowest form of solidarity there is. But I think that for every decade or so, every generational set, there is a special voice. And certainly for my lot, it was him."

"My hero was and still is Bob Dylan."

"I defy you to say what he'll be doing six months from now. He's just driven by pure art. You know, his son said to me..."There is no doubt that if my dad had never made it, if he was sitting on the side of the sidewalk with his guitar and a hat out in front of him, he would be doing precisely doing the same songs. His whole career would be exactly the same." Now, there is certainly hyperbole in that, but it's kind of, sort of true... If we have anybody who's Shakespeare in our time, it's Dylan, and he just speaks to me more and more, and he once said in an interview that the purpose of art was to inspire, and when you see a Dylan show...You would think he's so good, you know—if you go see a jazz cat who's so good playing bass, you can leave that show going, "Why even pick up a bass again?" But for some reason—and I'm not the only one that feels this—at the end of the Dylan show, art just seems so good. I want to go write a play, or write a novel. I'll stay up all night and write a song. And you don't care that it's not as good. The other thing that I love about Dylan is he is a freak, not a cheerleader... Dylan just stands there and says, "I am speaking for me. Maybe some of this is true for you to. I don't know. But I'm digging so deep." All of his mining, you know, is going towards his heart and deeper into his brain. He makes no attempt, that I can tell, to say, "Oh yeah, this is gonna kill 'em. This is what they'll like." And that's where universality has to live. You can't be universal if you're trying to please other people. You can only be universal if you have so clearly who you are, and Dylan has no idea who he is, but he's still searching and he's sharing that process with us."

"The conversation was flat. Suddenly, however, Dylan leapt to his feet and started berating me. He said, for example, something like, 'You'll never understand it; it happens so fast it'll go right past you,' and more of the same. I was startled, yes, but kept on trying to ask sensible, interesting questions; the attack persisted. I shrugged and left. The whole episode was entirely unprovoked... That evening, I went to the concert. My opinion then and now was that the music was unpleasant, the lyrics inflated, and Dylan a self-indulgent whining show-off."

"Musically, Dylan's not very gifted; he's borrowed his voice from old hillbillies. He's got a lot of borrowed things. He's not a great guitar player. He’s invented a character to deliver his songs ... it's a mask of sorts."

"He's one of the great artists of the century."

"I can still picture Bob Dylan, with just a bassist, a piano player, and his guitar, tenderly reworking "The Times They Are a-Changin'." When finished, he stepped off the stage, shook my hand, gave a little grin and bow in front of me and Michelle, and vanished without a word."

""The stage is the only place where I'm happy." But this has its own sadnesses, like so much love. He is the one person who has to be at a Dylan concert and the one person who can't go to a Dylan concert."

"A day doesn't go by when I don't listen to Dylan or at least think about him and his art. I just think we're terrifically lucky to be alive at a time when he is."

"Five years ago [Dylan] played a concert here at the university and I had no hand in arranging it; I was told about it rather late and could have killed the organizers. Shortly before the concert I received word to come backstage, so my wife and I went half an hour before the show. And Dylan said: "Mr Ricks, we meet at last." My reply was: "Have you read any good books lately?" [...] and he said: "Richard III". [...] Dylan wasn't at all surprised by my question and he really did want to talk about Richard III."

"Dylan creates a mythic atmosphere out of the land around us. The land we walk on every day and never see until someone shows it to us."

"Dylan has invented himself. He's made himself up from scratch. That is, from the things he had around him and inside him. Dylan is an invention of his own mind. The point isn't to figure him out but to take him in. He gets into you anyway, so why not just take him in? He's not the first one to have invented himself, but he's the first one to have invented Dylan..."

"Dylan was a revolutionary. Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. ... To this day, wherever great rock music is being made, there is the shadow of Bob Dylan."

"since I've been working in the theatre and listening over to some of his music and to his lyrics, I am getting quite a respect for him as a poet. I'm not happy about a lot of diffused, little cheating lines, second rate realism, that he sometimes offered. But in the same context, where the music is in a thriving rock culture, he's in that soft rock or whatever culture. Then he is a poet working within the same conditions that a Third World poet is working in because he is close to music and he's closer to the beat of the thing."

"Dylan's heart rests in his vocation. He is a white bluesman par excellence. His voice is born out of that vocation, informed by a vision rooted in reaching and teaching as many people as possible."

"Dylan is free now to work on his own terms. It would be foolish to predict what he will do next. But hopefully he will remain a mediator, using the language of pop to transcend it. If the gap between past and present continues to widen, such mediation may be crucial. In a communications crisis, the true prophets are the translators."

"I'll never be Bob Dylan. He's the master. If I'd like to be anyone, it's him. And he's a great writer, true to his music and done what he feels is the right thing to do for years and years and years. He's great. He's the one I look to. I'm always interested in what he's doing now, or did last, or did a long time ago that I didn't find out about. The guy has written some of the greatest poetry and put it to music in a way that it touched me, and other people have done that, but not so consistently or as intensely. Like me, he waits around and keeps going, and he knows that he doesn't have the muse all the time, but he knows that it'll come back and it'll visit him and he'll have his moment."

"There was a new popular music of protest. Pete Seeger had been singing protest songs since the forties, but now he came into his own, his audiences much larger. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, singing not only protest songs, but songs reflecting the new abandon, the new culture, became popular idols. A middle-aged woman on the West Coast, Malvina Reynolds, wrote and sang songs that fit her socialist thinking and her libertarian spirit, as well as her critique of the modern commercial culture."

"You don't know someone's changing the world until the world's been changed."

"There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted."

"Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows. We may pull apart the petals of a rose or make chemical analysis of its perfume, but the mystic beauty of its form and odor is still a secret, locked in to where we have no keys."

"Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen. Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life. To be a good loser is to learn how to win. I was sure there are ten men in me and I do not know or understand one of them. I could safely declare, I am an idealist. A Parisian cynic says "I believe in nothing. I am looking for clues." My statement would be : I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs."

"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way."

"Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions."

"I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?"

"Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders."

"The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor and city on silent haunches, and then moves on."

"I want the respect of intelligent men but I will choose for myself the intelligent. I love art but I decide for myself what is art. I adore beauty but only my own soul shall tell me what is beauty. I worship God but I define and describe God for myself. I am an individual. The pleasure of my own heart shall be first to inform me when I have done good work."

"Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work — I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now?"

"I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes."

"When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin... in the dust, in the cool tombs."

"Tell me if the lovers are losers... tell me if any get more than the lovers."

"Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar. Let me pry loose old walls. Let me lift and loosen old foundations."

"Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen."

"The Republic is a dream. Nothing happens unless first a dream."

"The name of an iron man goes round the world. It takes a long time to forget an iron man."

"Look out how you use proud words. When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back. They wear long boots, hard boots."

"The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked, "What are those?" "Soldiers." "What are soldiers?" "They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can." The girl held still and studied. "Do you know … I know something?" "Yes, what is it you know?" "Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.""

"The people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold. And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds."

"The people know the salt of the sea and the strength of the winds lashing the corners of the earth. The people take the earth as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope. Who else speaks for the Family of Man?"

"Man's life? A candle in the wind, hoar-frost on stone."

"Man is a long time coming. Man will yet win. Brother may yet line up with brother: This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers. There are men who can't be bought."

"A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique — but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby — with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker."

"If she forgets where she came from, if the people lose sight of what brought them along, if she listens to the deniers and mockers, then will begin the rot and dissolution."

"Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment."

"I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision …"

"The United States is, not are. The Civil War was fought over a verb. Orval Faubus don't know that. But he gonna know, he gonna know."

"Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you."

"One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude."

"I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it."

"The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something."

"The greatest cunning is to have none at all."

"There is a growing tendency, as his fame goes up in the world, to speak of Carl Sandburg as a He man, an eater of raw meat, a hairy one. In Chicago newspaper local rooms he is spoken of as John Guts. I do not think of him so although I've a suspicion that he sometimes writes under the influence of this particular dramatization of his personality. Buried deep within the He man, the hairy meat eating Sandburg there is another Sandburg, a sensitive, naive, hesitating Carl Sandburg, a Sandburg that hears the voice of the wind over the roofs of houses at night, a Sandburg that wanders often alone through grim city streets on winter nights, a Sandburg that knows and understands the voiceless cry in the heart of the farm girl of the plains when she comes to the kitchen door and sees for the first time the beauty of our prairie country. The poetry of John Guts doesn't excite me much. Hairy, raw meat eating He men are not exceptional in Chicago and the middle west. As for the other Sandburg, the naive, hesitant, sensitive Sandburg—among all the poets of America he is my poet."

"Sandburg in his poems uses neither metre nor rhyme, but if he gives an impression of ragged ease it is not much more than a surface impression. His verse... is highly organized; it is not free verse at all, in the common acceptance of the word. Rather it is repetitive verse. He uses parallel constructions; he repeats words and phrases with great skill; thereby he produces effects as complex and difficult sometimes as those of Swinburne's most intricate ballades. ...Sandburg is alien to most of the Anglo-Saxon elements in American life. Its aspects which he chooses to describe are those precisely which distinguish it from life in England. He talks about stockyards, wide sweeping prairies, the growth of mushroom cities, Hell on the Wabash, Watch your Step. He talks about booze runners, hankey panks, humpties (whatever they are) bulls, and Charlie Chaplin. He never mentions tea, gentlemen, golf, or any other of our briticisms. He is an American; not an Amayrican with the r trilled lightly against the upper teeth as in Back Bay, but a ril Amurricn. He avoids the language along with everything else that is English. He never wrote an American dictionary, but he does something more hazardous and exciting: he writes American. With earlier authors American was a dialect; it was the speech of the comedian and the soubrette; the hero, when serious, declaimed his Sunday-best Oxford. The case is opposite with Sandburg. He writes American when he is pompous, philosophic, sentimental; in a word when he is most upstage... Sandburg writes American like a foreign language, like a language freshly acquired in which each word has a new and fascinating meaning. It is a language, in fact, which never existed before; the separate words existed, but in the speech of no one man; Sandburg was the first to thesaurize them."

"The Sandburg heaven is nothing but the common street seen upside down. It's a place where the Lord isn't even a president, but a sort of composite of his own kin of earth folk and earth things. The imagistic poem, Loam, concentrates this thought... There are certain well intentioned mortals who, as soon as they hear the mere name, poetry... grovel, and then indulge in a whole category of spasms to the tune of that monstrosity, idol-worship.They are priest and congregation of every institution and gathering where Art and Uplift are synonymous. Fellows like Sandburg... don't belong to such devotional conclaves. Sandburg lives on the level. If he has dealings with poetry he has them on the ground common to both, as to trees, rocks and streams. ...the first thing I saw on the table of this man poet—Robert Frost, by the way—was a copy of Sandburg's Cornhuskers. Does the coincidence require commentary?"

"Translators, again-the most abused and patient lot of folk on earth-are helpful in making us better acquainted; though we hope the time will soon come when citizens of the twenty-one republics will no longer need translators. There is no reason for our not speaking each other's language...Ernesto Montenegro, on the other hand, has introduced Sandburg, Frost, Robinson, Masters, and many other North American poets to the Spanish reading public."

"The Review of Reviews... avers that Mr. Sandburg's 'amazing impressions of Chicago' are making history, and the Observer... thinks that 'no one can fail to be moved' by his 'experiments in the loose forms popularized by Whitman.' But the New Statesman... cannot quite stomach Mr. Sandburg. Again its critic... can find nothing better to say than that 'Mr. Sandburg sometimes overtops mere crudity,' and... can only add that Mr. Sandburg has 'achieved a few good things where a poetic sensitiveness survives the crushing effect of much American journalism.' The Saturday Review is at least downright in its likes and dislikes; its critic finds that the American poet 'makes up for a lack of limpidity and music by sheer brutality,' or 'with a total bankruptcy of metre.' But then, the Saturday Review is conservative, which Mr. Sandburg emphatically is n't."

"Mr. Sandburg possesses a powerful imagination, which plays over and about his realistic themes and constantly ennobles them. ...strikes, and factories, and slaughter-houses, and railroad trains, all take on a lyric quality under his touch. ...When Carl Sandburg left college, he was no longer an unskilled labourer, working with his hands. He was a thinking man, with a brain charged with ideas and emotions, determined to do his part in bringing about the millennium. For Carl Sandburg... is a revolutionary; he must push the world to where he is convinced it ought to be. ...again and again, he deserts the seer's mountain peak for the demagogue's soap-box. ...Mr. Sandburg is like a man striving to batter down a jail with balls of brightly coloured glass. ...Whether constant preoccupation with disease is a healthy form of literature, whether it acts as a curative, is open to question. But we can surely say that to be curative the disease must be treated unsentimentally and truly. Mr. Sandburg has aimed at doing this, has striven hard to do it. For this, one honours him above his fellows. For this, and the spirit of beauty which pervades his work."

"The late Mr. Sandburg was a public performer of the first rank ("Ker-oh-seen!" he crooned in one of the first TV pitches for the jet-engine — ole banjo on his knee, white hair mussed by the jet-stream), a poet of the second rank (who can ever forget that feline-footed fog?) and a biographer of awesome badness."

"Throughout all the years of the Masses and the Liberator, when he was a contributor of poems with an elemental sweep, I never happened to meet Carl Sandburg. But I think of him as a voice of the people, and with more reverence for the true Christian spirit and sympathy for the lowly than could be found in an average church full of pious members of the faith"

"Accept no substitutes; I bring truth to the youth."

"Tired of being trapped in this vicious cycle If one more cop harasses me I just might go psycho And when I get ‘em, I’ll hit ’em with the bum rush Only a lunatic would like to see his skull crushed Yo, if you’re smart you’ll really let me go, G But keep me cooped up in this ghetto and catch the Uzi They got me trapped."

"A few weeks after the song’s release, what was a fictionalized story became very real. On October 17, Tupac was crossing the street in downtown Oakland, California, when police officers Alexander Boyovich and Kevin Rodgers stopped him. They accused him of jaywalking and asked to see his ID. In the police report, they referred to Tupac by his middle name, Amaru, and called him angry and hostile. They said Tupac told them, “This is just two white cops who want to stop a n-----.” A month later at a press conference, Tupac told his side of the story. As he was preparing to enter Union Bank, the officers approached him. Tupac asked why they were requesting to see his ID. He accused them of having a slave-master mentality before allegedly being thrown onto the concrete, cuffed, and choked until he was left unconscious. He was put in jail for seven hours for resisting arrest and later released."

"In July 1993, a jury convicted Howard of capital murder and sentenced him to death. The next day, Linda Sue Davidson moved forward with a lawsuit against 2Pac, Time Warner, and Interscope Records. She didn’t believe that 2Pacalypse Now merited First Amendment protection, alleging that the music was obscene, contained what she called “fighting words,” defamed officers like her husband, and incited imminent illegal conduct in individuals like Howard. More specifically, 2Pac’s music ultimately led to her husband’s demise. “Our goal is to punish Time Warner and wake up the executives who run the music business,” said Jim Cole, the attorney representing Linda Sue Davidson. “This suit isn’t just about some storyteller spouting militant rhetoric here. 2Pac is dangerously serious. This suit is about stopping giant corporations from shamelessly making money off music designed to incite impressionable young men to shoot and kill cops like Bill.”"

"On March 28, 1997, Judge John D. Rainey, who presided over the libel suit Linda Sue Davidson brought against 2Pac, concluded: “2Pacalypse Now is both disgusting and offensive. That the album has sold hundreds of thousands of copies is an indication of society’s aesthetic and moral decay. However, the First Amendment became part of the Constitution because the Crown sought to suppress the Framers’ own rebellious, sometimes violent views. Thus, although the Court cannot recommend 2Pacalypse Now to anyone, it will not strip Shakur’s free speech rights based on the evidence presented by the Davidsons.”"

"Vice President Dan Quayle, broadening his attack on Hollywood, Tuesday blasted the recording industry for producing rap music that he said had led to violence. Quayle called on the Time Warner Inc. subsidiary, Interscope Records, to withdraw the album “2pacalypse Now” by rap artist Tupac Amaru Shakur from stores. Quayle charged that the record was responsible for the death of a Texas state trooper, who was shot to death in April by a suspect who allegedly was listening to the album on the tape deck of a stolen truck when he was stopped by the officer."

"The trooper’s family has filed a civil suit against Shakur and Interscope, claiming the record’s violence-laden lyrics incite “imminent lawless action.” One of the album’s songs, “Soulja’s Story,” speaks of “blasting” a police officer and “droppin’ the cop” after a traffic stop. Quayle likened the album to rapper Ice-T’s notorious “Cop Killer,” which Time Warner Inc. pulled off the market this summer. “Once again we’re faced with an irresponsible corporate act,” Quayle said in Houston after he spoke with the late trooper’s daughter, Kimberly Davidson. “There is absolutely no reason for a record like this to be published by a responsible corporation.”"

"In all my years of defending inner-city clients I have never introduced music before as a mitigating circumstance in a murder case. But I do believe it applies in this case. Without the music riling him up, I do not think that this incident would have occurred."

"First, I wanna say 'peace' to my mother. She's not here but I gotta give a 'peace out' to her because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my mother."

"It's not going to stop until "we" stop it. And it's not just white man that's doing this to Brenda. It's not just white man that's keeping us trapped. It's "black." And we have to find the new African in everybody... But before we can be African, we gotta be black first."

"What I want you to take seriously is what we have to do for the youth."

"You grew up, we grew up B.C. Before crack. That's just saying it all. You understand? You don't have parents... You have young kids, fourteen, coming home and their mama is smoking out, going to their best friend to get the product."

"It's not just about you taking care of "your" child. It's about you taking care of these children."

"First, I want to say peace to my mother. She's not here, but I've got to give a 'peace out' to her, because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my mother. And, I look in the front of this thing and it says 'start from within to rebuild our original greatness.' Right? Okay, well that's what my mother did. You know what I'm saying? And I'm listen about freedom fighters and strugglers. Well you got to understand when it was 'in' to have a gun and be in the streets, my mother gave that up to be in a house and wash the dishes and feed us. You know what I'm saying? And put the thoughts in our brain. We didn't get any of that history from all of those soldiers that we lost. We got none of that. They all went to jail if you can remember that. They all went to penitentiaries. We didn't see none of that knowledge. If it was not for my mother, that stayed home, and didn't go out and do all that, then I wouldn't have shit, excuse my language. But, I wouldn't have been nowhere. So what I want to do hopefully is. I want to be, not I want to be, I am Tupac Shakur. I have to be a reminder that we cant chill out. No, it not time cool out in banquets, its still on. It's on just like it was on when you were young and you want to say 'fuck that'. Just like you said 'fuck that', back then. So how come, now that I'm twenty years old and ready to start some shit, everybody's telling me to 'calm down'. Don't curs them, go to school, go to college. Well, fuck that. We have had colleges for awhile now. You know what I'm sayin? There's still Brenda's out there and niggas are still trapped. You know what I'm saying? And it gets me, irked. You know what I'm saying? Because I understand that it's not going to stop. You know what I'm saying?"

"It's not going to stop until we stop it. And it's not just white men that's doing this to Brenda. It's not just white men that's keeping us trapped. It's 'black', and we have to find the new African in everybody. In all of us, because if we keep running around looking for black and who got the most colors on or who got the baddest dashiki, we're still going to, excuse my language, we're still going to get fucked. Because it hurts me that my mother right now is going though, you know, she has to get clean. This is somebody I watched travel the whole country. You know what I'm saying? During the time when our women were scared to speak up. But, a Black Panther she spoke at Harvard, Yale, everywhere and now. I see my mother as what's really going on. You know what I'm saying? I don't see no big parade around my mother now. She's got a dozen fucking awards, and I don't see nobody there. You understand what I'm saying? So out of this, I take that lightly. I take all this lightly."

"What I want you to take seriously, is what we have to do for the youth. Because we're coming up in a totally different world. This is not the same world that you had this is not 6th Street its not. You grew up, we grew up B.C. Before crack. That's just saying it all. You understand? We did not grow up without parents. You had parents that told you this and that and told you what went on back in the day. You have young kids, fourteen, coming home and their mama is smoking out, going to their best friend to get the product. You understand what I'm saying? So that means it's not just about you taking care of "your" child. It's about you taking care of "these children". It hurts that I got to, it bothers me, not hurts, that I have to sidestep my youth to stand up and do some shit that somebody else is suppose to be doing. You understand what I'm saying? There's too many men out here for me to be doing this, because it ain't my turn yet. I'm supposed to be following behind him getting the knowledge. I don't even got a chance to get the fucking knowledge. I can't go to college. There's too much problems out here. I don't got the money. Nobody does. You understand what I'm saying? So what I'm saying is, it's not as easy as we're mapping it out to be. We've got to stay real. Before we can be new African we've gotta be black first. You understand? We've gotta get our brothers from the streets like Harriett Tubman did. Why can't we look at that and see exactly what she was doing? Like Malcolm did, the real Malcolm, before the Nation of Islam. You've got to remember, this was a pimp. You know what I'm saying, we forgot about all that. In our strive to be enlightened we forgot about all our brothers in the street, about all our dope dealers, our pushers and our pimps, and that's who's teaching the new generation, because y'all not doing it. I'm sorry. But, it's the pimps and pushers who's teaching us. So, if you got a problem with how we were raised, its because they was the only ones who could do it. They the only ones who did it, because everybody else wanted to go to college, and you know, yeah everything's changed, they were the ones telling you 'the white man ain't shit, there you go, check this out young blood, you take this product, you switch it, you get money and that's how you beat the white man, you get money, you get the hell up out of here.' Nobody else did that. So I don't wanna hear shit about nobody telling me who I can't love and respect until you start doing what they did. To me, this is Mecca. This is the black family. You know what I'm saying? But, what makes it that much sadder, what makes me wanna cry, is that when I leave this place, so does Mecca. You understand what I'm saying? We're going back to the real deal. Right out there, you're going see the same sisters and Brenda, they're right out there, and y'all are going to get in your cars and drive the fuck home."

"They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor."

"To dance with the naked [blow-up] doll, that was me! That's what I mean by I'm real, I'm truly hardcore, because I needed the money and I had to work. So if he told me that for me to get paid I had to go out there in bikini briefs and hop on top of this [blow-up] doll and that's how I gotta get paid, and I was homeless at the time, that's what I had to do. But What I did was not let him pimp me, you know what I'm saying. It wasn't like I just did that because that was my order. As soon as I got the check's to say what was on my mind, I said what was on my mind. And we have a platinum record now, you know what I'm saying."

"You have to work from one point to go to another. So I admire work ethic, I think it should be re-inforced through out our neigbourhoods, that everybody should work hard, practice makes perfect, you have to be diligent with what you want, you have to apply your self, you have to motivate your self. You have to do for-self by your self, and then you can do things for other people. But that's what I had to do, I had to do for-self."

"I want, when they see me, They know that everyday when I'm breathing is for us to go further. Everytime I speak I want the truth to come out. Not one person even realizes that I have white relatives, my cousin just had a son who is “White” but everytime I speak I want a shiver so yes, I do omit things that I feel are not accurately portraying my “character”. I don't want them to be like; they know what I'm gonna say, because it's polite. Im not saying I'm gonna rule the world or I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee you that I will spark the brain that will change the world. And that's our job, It's to spark somebody else watching us. We might not be the one's, but let's not be selfish and because we not gonna change the world let's not talk about how we should change it. I don't know how to change it, but I know if I keep talking about how dirty it is out here, somebody's gonna clean it up."

"I gotta big mouth, I can't help it, I talk from my heart, I'm real you know what I'm sayin whatever comes comes. But my controverse problems, It's not my fault, I try to find my way in the world you know, I try to be somebody instead of just, make money off of everybody. You know what im saying, so I go down paths that haven't been traveled before and I usually mess up, but I learn, you know what I'm saying, I come back stronger, I'm not talking ignorant, you know what I'm saying. So obviously put thought into what I do. So I think my mouth, my controverse, I have not been out of the paper since I joined Digital Underground, I've been in all, you know what I'm saying, my name has not been not uttered, you know what I'm saying, and that's good for me because I don't wanna be forgotten. If I'm forgotten then that means I'm comfortable and that means I think everything is okay."

"It's like a battle, trying to find the right words to say at the right time."

"It's a constant man-ego-check going on in the streets, in this world."

"I believe honestly that I can talk. I believe that I have the ability to reason, I have logic, I have compassion, I have understanding. If we talk there's no problem you know what I'm saying. But that's not what happened. People used what they heard in media and that's how they come at me, and then you know we got a clash."

"If your not cheering for me, for what I'm doing, don't cheer for me. Don't cheer cause you think I'm cute, you know what I'm saying, screw that. Cheer for me for what I'm doing, for what I stand for, and when I go to jail you should cheer louder."

"I have no patience for anybody that doubts me, none at all."

"I'm not thuggin' for me, I'm thuggin' for my family, I pay all the bills, I feed my whole family, wrong or right, I do and I can't stop."

"The main thing for us to remember is that, the same crime element that white people are scared of, black people are scared of. The same crime element that white people fear, black people fear. So we defend our self from the same crime element that they are scared of, you know what I'm saying, while they are waiting for legislations to pass and everything, we're next door to the killer, we're next door to him you know. Because we up in the projects where it's 80 niggas in the building. All them killers that they letting out, they're right there in that building. Just because we're black we get along with the killers or something? We get along with rapist's because we're black and from the same hood? What is that? We need protection too."

"I made a metamorphose, I'm a new person today, because I used to strongly and honestly, honestly! I feel like I can represent my generation so much because I honestly did not care whether I lived or died. But now I can not die, with people thinking I'm a rapist or a criminal, I can not leave until this shit is straight, you know I'm not suicidal. I can't go until ya'll really know what time it is. And then after that, BOOM!, It's all over and we can see how this shit fall, but that's how it is, and the reason being is because if I can't live free, if I can't live with the same respect as the next man, I don't wanna be here, because god has cursed me to see what life should be like, If God wanted me to be this person and be happy here, he wouldn't let me feel so oppressed, he wouldn't let me feel so trampled on, you know what I'm saying, he wouldn't let me think the things I think. So I feel I'm doing Gods work, you know what I'm saying just because I don't have nothing to pass around for people to put money in a bucket don't mean I ain't doing God's work."

"The only way I've been practicing my whole life, to live my life is to be responsible for what I do. I don't know how to be responsible for what every black male did, I don't know. And yes, I am gonna say that I'm a thug, that's because I came from the gutter and I'm still here! I'm not saying I'm a thug because I wanna rob you or rape people and things. I'm a business man, I mean, you know I'm a business man because you find me at my places of business."

"It's not my liking for guns, what about the NRA? We all have the rights to bear arms, I have that, I have that same right as you do. Just because I'm black doesn't mean I shouldn't have a gun; I legally own guns."

"I know how it's gonna be when I die. It's going to be no noise, you ain't going to hear people screaming. I'mma fade out."

"Marlon Brando is not a gangster-actor, he's an actor. Axl Rose and them are not gangster rock-and-rollers, they're rock-and-rollers right. So I'm a rapper, this is what I do. I'm an artist."

"I think being humble is sexy."

"I think that I'm really, I was a reactionary, and now I don't do that any more. Same person, but I don't react. Before, I reacted. I didn't like the cameras, so I spit."

"I'm known as a survivor now, I hope so, for the jail thing, bullets and everything, controversies and everything, I hope so. And I want to be in the future known as somebody. You know I want people to be talking about me like you know: "remember when he was real bad, remember when Tupac was real bad". You know what I mean, they do that about a lot of actors now, like John Travolta I read stories like "remember you were wild". And all these other people, and now they're like sweet hearts. We all should get that chance, I just want my chance."

"Jail is big business, believe me. I'm in jail, I see the big business. You can feed a whole town off one jail. This jail is in the middle of a town that feeds everybody. Everybody works here, this is the main income. So if there were no criminals, nobody would work."

"The guns are turning away from Europe and Russia and Iran and Iraq and they're turning to us."

"America is the biggest gang in the world."

"Prison kills your spirit, straight up. It kills your spirit. There is no creativity, there's none of that."

"Now if we do wanna live the thug life and the gangsta' life and all that, OK, so stop being cowards and let's have a revolution. But we don't wanna do that, dudes just wanna live "character", they wanna be "cartoons", but if they really wanted to do something, they was that tuff, alright, let's start our own country, let's start a revolution, let's get outta' here, let's do something. But they don't wanna do that, they wanna pimp our communities and portray this image that they know we all can't survive and make, and that's what I saw."

"No matter what these people say about me, my music does not glorify any image, my music is spiritual if you listen to it. It's all about emotion, it's all about life."

"Watch people, because you can fake for a long time, but one day you're gonna show yourself to be a phony."

"Measure a man by his actions fully, from the beginning to the end. Don't take a piece out of my life or a song out of my music and say this is what I'm about, because you know better than that."

"I don't feel like what I did was so evil, I just feel like the way I was living and my mentality was a part of my progression to be a man."

"Don't support the phonies, support the real."

"Listen to the words people say in their lyrics, and tell me, if that's some real shit, if that's real to you, you know what I mean. Listen to what they sayin', don't just bob your head to the beat, peep the game, and listen to what Im saying. Hold us accountable for it."

"Trust nobody, TRUST NO BODY."

"Fear is stronger than love, remember that. Fear is stronger than love, all that love I gave didn't mean nothing when it came to fear."

"The only thing that can kill me is death, that's the only thing that can ever stop me, is death, and even then my music will live forever."

"I've always been an actor, the reason I've been successful in the rap-game I think is that I treat my albums like movies, and I treat writing it like I'm a character writing a story, you know, for each album whatever I'm going through, whatever stages I'm going through, and I do it vividly with vivid pitcure, with action and description, and an beginning and with an end, and conflict, and you know, redemption, things like that. So I feel like I always been an actor and acting is my first love."

"If you thought about it I'm hardly the villain, I'm hardly the one you should be scared of. It's the guy who can't talk, it's the guy without a job, it's the one with scares in his face, not the one clean cut, you know what I mean you should worry about a lot of other things, but not me."

"All good niggas, all the niggas who change the world, die in violence. They don't die in regular ways."

"Basically It's a hypocritical view, because what your saying is it's okay for us to live in the dirt, in the gutter, in less than human conditions, but it's not okay for us to tell people that we are living in these conditions."

"Everybody's at war with different things... I'm at war with my own heart sometimes."

"On the whole, I don't have any friends. Friends come and go; I've lost my trust factor. I believe I have people who think they're my friend. And I believe that there are people probably in their heart who are friends toward me or are friends to me. But they're not my friends, because what I learned is that fear is stronger than love."

"It's not like I idolize this one guy Machiavelli. I idolize that type of thinking where you do whatever's gonna make you achieve your goal."

"This new Makaveli album I got comin' out, I'm takin' on niggas. It's like, my dopest album ever."

"I am the future of black America."

"Fuck it, I feel like I shine."

"I can't explain why I shine and no one else shines. I think everybody shines in different things."

"The reason I sell 6 million records, the reason I could go to jail and come out without a scratch, the reason I can walk around, the reason I am who I am today is because I can look directly in to my face and find my soul, it's there, it's not sold, i didn't sell it, it's still within me, I still feel it, my heart is still connected to my body."

"My adversaries crumble when we rumble; it's a catastrophe."

"It seems, my main thing was to be major paid The game sharper than a motherfucking razor blade Say money bring bitches, bitches bring lies."

"You claim to be a player, but I fucked your wife."

"Killing ain't fair, but somebody's got to do it."

"More money means litigating, more player-hating. Got a cell at the pen, for me waiting. Is this my fate?"

"Currency means nothing if you still ain't free. Money breeds jealousy. Take the game from me; I hope for better days. Trouble comes naturally. Running from authorities. 'Til they capture me, and my aim is to spread more smiles than tears. Utilize lessons learned from my childhood years."

"I ain't a killer, but don't push me Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin' pussy."

"Some people say I was a thug and a gangster; other people remember me as a poet and a born leader. But I'm saying to you, measure a man by his actions fully, through his whole life, from the beginning to the end."

"Remember, this country had a man named J. Edgar Hoover, whose job it was to destroy the credibility of any black man coming up."

"My mother was pregnant with me while she was in prison. She was her own attorney, never been to law school. She was facing 300 and something odd years. One black woman, pregnant, beat the case. That just goes to show you the strength of a black woman and the strength of the oppressed."

"When I was a little baby, I remember that one moment of calm peace, and three minutes after that, it was on."

"But in my homeboys' high school, it's not like that. They don't have trips to go see this Broadway play, they don't read things we read. They didn't know when I was like: "Yo, Shakespeare's dope.""

"The same crime element that white people are scared of black people are scared of. While they waiting for legislation to pass, we next door to the killer. All them killers they let out, they're in that building. Just because we black, we get along with the killers? What is that? We need protection too."

"You have to be logical. You know? If I know that in this hotel room they have food every day, and I'm knocking on the door every day to eat, and they open the door, let me see the party, let me see them throwing salami all over, I mean, just throwing food around, but they're telling me there's no food."

"Every day, I'm standing outside trying to sing my way in: We are hungry, please let us in. We are hungry, please let us in. After about a week that song is gonna change to: We hungry, we need some food. After two, three weeks, it's like: Give me the food Or I'm breaking down the door. After a year you're just like: I'm picking the lock. Coming through the door blasting."

"It's like, you hungry, you reached your level. We asked ten years ago. We was asking with the Panthers. We was asking with them, the Civil Rights Movement. We was asking. Those people that asked are dead and in jail. So now what do you think we're gonna do? Ask?"

"No, you don't wanna get me started. Jell-O with hair all in the mold. I'd be like, "Damn, man, how are you gonna mess up Jell-O?" Jell-O is so wholesome and family-like. It just ruins it for me. To have a hair in there, yeah. I mean, I'm like, "Come on, Bill Cosby pumps this, man!""

"And you can't go, "There's a hair in my Jell-O. I'd like to send this back. Can I see the cook, please?" The cook is a big dude named Bubba Joe."

"I got shot. I always felt like I'd be shot. Somebody was trying to do me some harm because a lot of people don't like me. But I didn't think it was gonna happen at that particular moment."

"Niggers was the ones with the rope, hanging off trees; Niggas are the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs."

"Measure a man by his actions fully, through his whole life, from the beginning to the end."

"Coming to grips with my past, it was hard. I don't feel like what I did was so evil, I just feel like the way I was living, and my mentality, was part of my progression to be a man."

"I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world."

"You grow, we all grow, we're made to grow. You either evolve or disappear."

"Keep ya head up. Do what you gotta do. And then, inside of you, I will be reborn."

"The real tragedy is that there are some ignorant brothers out here. That's why I'm not on this all-white or all-black shit. I'm on this all-real or all fake shit with people, whatever color you are. Because niggas will do you. I mean, there's some [foul] niggas out there [in the streets]; the same niggas that did Malcolm X, the same niggas that did Jesus Christ; every brother ain't a brother. They will do you. So just because it's black, don't mean it's cool. And just because it's white don't mean it's evil."

"But I know for a fact that had I had a father, I'd have some discipline. I'd have more confidence. Your mother cannot calm you down the way a man can. Your mother can't reassure you the way a man can. My mother couldn't show me where my manhood was. You need a man to teach you how to be a man. When I was young I was quiet, withdrawn. I read a lot, wrote poetry, kept a diary. I watched TV all day. I stayed in front of the television. It was when I was in front of the TV by myself, being alone in the house by myself, having to cook dinner by myself, eat by myself. Just being by myself and looking at TV, at families and all these people out there in this pretend world. I knew I could be part of it if I pretended too, So early on I just watched and emulated ... and I just thirsted for that. I thought if I could be and act like those characters, act like those people, I could have some of their joy. If I could act like I had a big family I wouldn't feel as lonely."

"Again, it’s good that the judges pushed back against those attacks on 2Pac’s artistry and his constitutional right, but we’ve seen that since that time, prosecutors have continued to use rap lyrics to try to chill free expression."

"Attorney Cole and Linda Sue Davidson’s hypothesis that Hip-Hop music promoted actionable violence was not a standalone occurrence. In 1995, attorney Ann T. Bowe tried what was referred to as the “rap defense.” She alleged that 2Pac’s guest verse on South Central Cartel’s ’N Gatz We Truss was what led two Milwaukee teenagers to shoot and kill a police officer. “The violent anti-police lyrics appear to have acted as command hallucinations which influenced his behavior,” said Bowe. “This young man insists that certain passages in these songs are so much a part of his consciousness that it was as if they just kept playing over and over in his head that night.”"

"This suit isn’t just about some storyteller spouting militant rhetoric here. 2Pac is dangerously serious."

"Ob Sie Adeles "Skyfall" von Megan Marie Hart intonieren, von Kylie Minogue piepsen oder von Tupac Shakur rappen lassen, macht einen Unterschied."

"One of the most beloved and influential rappers of all time, Tupac Shakur, otherwise known as 2Pac, played an essential role in popularizing the gangsta rap genre and rap music as a whole. His seminal hits “California Love,” “All Eyez On Me” and “Changes” helped make the rapper a household name during the decade, and many of his albums are still regarded as foundational pillars to California’s rap scene."

"2Pacalypse Now (1991)"

"Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z (1993)"

"Thug Life: Thug Life Vol. 1 (1994)"

"Me Against the World (1995)"

"All Eyez on Me (1996)"

"Makaveli: The Don Killuminati: 7 Day Theory (1996)"

"R U Still Down? (1997)"

"2Pac's Greatest Hits (1998)"

"Still I Rise (2Pac + Outlawz) (1999)"

"The Lost Tapes (1989/released 2000)"

"The Rose that Grew from Concrete (2000)"

"Until the End of Time (2001)"

"Better Dayz (2002)"

"Tupac Resurrection (2003)"

"Nu-Mixx Klazzics (2003)"

"2Pac Live (2004)"

"Loyal to the Game (2004)"

"The Rose Vol. 2 (2005)"

"Live At The House Of Blues (with Outlawz, Dogg Pound, Snoop Dogg, K-Ci & JoJo) (2005)"

"Pac's Life (2006)"

"Best Of 2Pac Vol 1:Thug and Vol 2:Life (2007)"

"You know the day destroys the night, Night divides the day, Tried to run — Tried to hide — Break on through to the other side!"

"We chased our pleasures here, Dug our treasures there, But can you still recall The time we cried? Break on through to the other side!"

"It hurts to set you free, but you’ll never follow me."

"People are strange when you're a stranger Faces look ugly when you're alone Women seem wicked when you're unwanted Streets are uneven when you're down."

"When you're strange Faces come out of the rain When you're strange No one remembers your name When you're strange."

"Five to one, baby One in five No one here gets out alive, now You get yours, baby I'll get mine Gonna make it, baby If we try."

"The old get older And the young get stronger May take a week And it may take longer They got the guns But we got the numbers Gonna win, yeah We're takin' over Come on!"

"Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name? Hello, I love you, let me jump in your game."

"Take an Indian home to lunch."

"The future's uncertain and the end is always near"

"At first flash of Eden, We race down to the sea. Standing there on Freedom's shore. Waiting for the sun..."

"This is the strangest life I’ve ever known."

"There's a killer on the road His brain is squirming like a toad."

"Listen to this, and I'll tell you 'bout the heartache I'll tell you 'bout the heartache and the loss of God."

"I'll tell you this — No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

"Mute nostril agony."

"There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors."

"Don't let me die in an automobile I wanna lie in an open field Want the snakes to suck my skin Want the worms to be my friends Want the birds to eat my eyes As here I lie The clouds fly by"

"Alright listen man, we got a special treat for you now. This is a little tour-de-force that we've only done a couple times in front of strangers, and it starts off kinda quiet, so if everybody just kinda relax, take a few deep breaths, think about your eventual end and what's gonna happen tonight; and we'll try and do something good to your head, right man? I don't know if you're aware of it, but this whole evening is being taped for eternity and beyond that too. And so listen man, if you want to be represented in eternity with some uncouth language then I hope you'll stand up on the top of your seat and shout it out very clearly or we're not going to get it on tape. Don't worry, the operation won't take long and you'll feel much better in the morning."

"I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps "Oh look at that!" Then — whoosh, and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again... and they won't be able to forget me — ever."

"I think, in these days, especially in the States, you have to be a politician or an assassin or something, to really be a superstar."

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain."

"Yoga powers. To make oneself invisible or small. To become gigantic and reach to the farthest things. To change the course of nature. To place oneself anywhere in space or time. To summon the dead. To exalt senses and perceive inaccessible images, of events on other worlds, in one's deepest inner mind, or in the minds of others."

"(Windows work two ways, mirrors one way.) You never walk through mirrors or swim through windows."

"The world becomes an apparently infinite, yet possibly finite, card game. Image combinations, permutations, comprise the world game."

"Cinema has evolved in two paths. One is spectacle. Like the phantasmagoria, its goal is the creation of a total substitute sensory world. The other is peep show, which claims for its realm both the erotic and the untampered observance of real life, and imitates the keyhole or voyeur's window without need of color, noise, grandeur."

"The subject says "I see first lots of things which dance — then everything becomes gradually connected"."

"Few would defend a small view of Alchemy as "Mother of Chemistry", and confuse its true goal with those external metal arts. Alchemy is an erotic science, involved in buried aspects of reality, aimed at purifying and transforming all being and matter. Not to suggest that material operations are ever abandoned. The adept holds to both the mystical and physical work."

"They can picture love affairs of chemicals and stars, a romance of stones, or the fertility of fire. Strange, fertile correspondences the alchemists sensed in unlikely orders of being. Between men and planets, plants and gestures, words and weather."

"Cinema returns us to anima, religion of matter, which gives each thing its special divinity and sees gods in all things and beings. Cinema, heir of alchemy, last of an erotic science."

"The Lords. Events take place beyond our knowledge or control. Our lives are lived for us. We can only try to enslave others. But gradually, special perceptions are being developed. The idea of the "Lords" is beginning to form in some minds. We should enlist them into bands of perceivers to tour the labyrinth during their mysterious nocturnal appearances. The Lords have secret entrances and they know disguises. But they give themselves away in minor ways. Too much glint of light in the eye. A wrong gesture. Too long and curious a glance."

"More or less, we're all afflicted with the psychology of the voyeur. Not in a strictly clinical or criminal sense, but in our whole physical and emotional stance before the world. Whenever we seek to break this spell of passivity, our actions are cruel and awkward and generally obscene, like an invalid who has forgotten to walk."

"I can't believe this is happening I can't believe all these people are sniffing each other & backing away teeth grinning hair raised, growling, here in the slaughtered wind"

"Do you dare deny my potency my kindness or forgiveness?"

"Camel caravans bear witness guns to Caesar. Hordes crawl and seep inside the walls. The streets flow stone. Life goes on absorbing war. Violence kills the temple of no sex."

"Cool pools from a tired land sink now in the peace of evening Clouds weaken and die. The sun, an orange skull, whispers quietly, becomes an island, & is gone. There they are watching us everything will be dark. The light changed. We were aware knee-deep in the fluttering air as the ships move on trains in their wake."

"This is it no more fun the death of all joy has come."

"Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind. Me and my mother and father, and a grandmother and a grandfather. were driving through the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian workers had either hit another car, or just — I don't know what happened — but there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death. So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time I tasted fear. I musta' been about four — like a child is like a flower, his head is just floating in the breeze, man. The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking back — is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead Indians... maybe one or two of 'em... were just running around freaking out, and just leaped into my soul. And they're still there."

"Do you know the warm progress under the stars? Do you know we exist? Have you forgotten the keys to the kingdom? Have you been born yet & are you alive?"

"Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests"

"Now listen to this... Ill tell you about texas radio and the big beat Soft driven, slow and mad Like some new language Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god Wandering, wandering in hopeless night Out here in the perimeter there are no stars... Out here we is stoned... Immaculate."

"O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives The moths & atheists are doubly divine & dying We live, we die and death not ends it"

"I touched her thigh and death smiled"

"We have assembled inside this ancient & insane theatre To propagate our lust for life & flee the swarming wisdom of the streets"

"Resident mockery give us an hour for magic"

"I'm sick of dour faces Staring at me from the T.V. Tower. I want roses in my garden bower; dig?"

"Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws"

"I will not go Prefer a feast of Friends To the Giant family"

"The program for this evening is not new. You have seen This entertainment through and through. You've seen your birth, your life and death; you might recall all of the rest — (did you have a good world when you died?) — enough to base a movie on?"

"They're making a joke of our universe"

"Do you know freedom exists in a school book Did you know madmen are running our prisons Within a jail Within a gaol Within a white free protestant maelstrom We're perched headlong on the edge of boredom We're reaching for death on the end of a candle We're trying for something that's already found us."

"Always a playground instructor, never a Killer"

"Her cunt gripped him like a warm friendly hand."

"Indian, Indian what did you die for? Indian says, nothing at all."

"Lying on stained wretched sheets with the bleeding virgin, we could plan a murder...or start a religion."

"You know that it would be untrue You know that I would be a liar If I was to say to you Girl, we couldn't get much higher. Come on baby, light my fire — Come on baby, light my fire — Try to set the night on fire."

"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception."

"He was giving voice in a rock 'n' roll setting to the Oedipus complex, at the time a widely discussed tendency in Freudian psychology. He wasn't saying he wanted to do that to his own mom and dad. He was re-enacting a bit of Greek drama. It was theatre!"

"Jim's contribution to music was that Jim was real. Jim was real on stage. Jim was real when he wrote his songs, when he sang his songs in the studio. He was not a performer. He was not an entertainer. He was not a showman. He was a shaman. He was possessed."

"The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client."

"Communication must become total and conscious before we can stop it."

"The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle...yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word."

"1. Never give anything away for nothing. 2. Never give more than you have to (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). 3. Always take back everything if you possibly can."

"You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live."

"The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts and feelings. They are pain killers; pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers — the whole spectrum of sedative drugs."

"When a certain stage of responsibility and awareness has been reached by a young banker he is taken to a room lined with family portraits in the middle of which is an ornate gilded toilet. Here he comes every day to defecate surrounded by the family portraits until he realizes that money is shit. And what does the money machine eat to shit it out? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity. There was a time when the machine ate in moderation from a plentiful larder and what it ate was replaced. Now the machine is eating faster."

"A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on."

"Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words."

"There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it."

"You are a Shit Spotter. It's satisfying work. ... We have observed that most of the trouble in the world has been caused by ten to twenty percent of folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus. Now your virus is an obligate cellular parasite and my contention is that evil is quite literally a virus parasite occupying a certain brain area which we may term the RIGHT center. The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right. And right here we must make a diagnostic distinction between the hard-core virus-occupied shit and a plain, ordinary, mean no-good son of a bitch. Some of these sons of bitches don't cause any trouble at all, just want to be left alone."

"Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties. Those individuals who cannot or will not mind their business cling to the victimless-crime concept, equating drug use and private sexual behavior with robbery and murder. If the right to mind one's own business is recognized, the whole shit disposition is untenable and Hell hath no vociferous fury than an endangered parasite."

"Last night I encountered a dream cat with a very long neck and a body like a human fetus, gray and transluscent. I don't know what it needs or how to provide for it. Another dream years ago of a human child with eyes on stalks. It is very small, but can walk and talk "Don't you want me?" Again, I don't know how to care for the child. But I am dedicated to protecting and nurturing him at any cost! It is the function of the Guardian to protect hybrids and mutants in the vulnerable stage of infancy."

"This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers."

"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military."

"England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs."

"Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE."

"Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises, don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful — be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency."

"The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity."

"When you stop growing you start dying."

"I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life."

"Tea heads are not like junkies. A junky hands you the money, takes his junk and cuts. But tea heads don't do things that way. They expect the peddler to light them up and sit around talking for half an hour to sell two dollars' worth of weed. If you come right to the point, they say you are a "bring down." In fact, a peddler should not come right out and say he is a peddler."

"Tea heads are gregarious, they are sensitive, and they are paranoiac. If you get to be known as a "drag" or a "bring down," you can't do business with them."

"I can say definitely that weed is an aphrodisiac and that sex is more enjoyable under the influence of weed than without it. Anyone who has used good weed will verify this statement."

"The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not."

"You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere."

"I lay down and tried to sleep. When I closed my eyes I saw an Oriental face, the lips and nose eaten by disease. The disease spread, melting the face into an amoeboid mass in which the eyes floated, dull crustacean eyes. Slowly, a new face formed around the eyes. A series of faces, hieroglyphs, distorted and leading to the final place where the human road ends, where the human form can no longer contain the crustacean horror that has grown inside it."

"Coke is pure kick. It lifts you straight up, a mechanical lift that starts leaving you as soon as you feel it"

"A ghost in daylight on a crowded street."

"A junky runs on junk time. When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junk time to start. A sick junkie has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait."

"When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak."

"A lot of people made quick easy money during the War and for several years after. Any business was good, just as any stock is good on a rising market. People thought they were sharp operators, when actually they were just riding a lucky streak. Now the Valley is in a losing streak and only the big operators can ride it out. In the Valley economic laws work out like a formula in high school algebra, since there is no human element to interfere. The very rich are getting richer and all the others are going broke. The big holders are not shrewd or ruthless or enterprising. They don't have to say or think anything. All they have to do is sit and the money comes pouring in. You have to get up with the Big Holders or drop out and take any job they hand you. The middle class is getting the squeeze, and only one in a thousand will go up. The Big Holders are the house, and the small farmers are the players. The player goes broke if he keeps on playing, and the farmer has to play or lose to the Government by default."

"Sodomy is as old as the human species."

"Why does an addict get a new habit so much quicker than a junk virgin, even after the addict has been clean for years? I do not accept the theory that junk is lurking in the body all that time - the spine is where it supposedly holes up - and I disagree with all psychological answers. I think the use of junk causes permanent cellular alteration. Once a junky, always a junky. You can stop using junk, but you are never off after the first habit."

"Junk short-circuits sex. The drive to non-sexual sociability comes from the same place sex comes from, so when I have an H or M shooting habit I am non-sociable. If someone wants to talk, O.K. But there is no drive to get acquainted. When I come off the junk, I often run through a period of uncontrolled sociability and talk to anyone who will listen."

"Junk takes everything and gives nothing but insurance against junk sickness."

"Junk is an inoculation of death that keeps the body in a condition of emergency"

"You sometimes wake up from a dream and think, "Thank God, I didn't really do that!" Reconstructing a period of blackout you think, "My God, did I really do that?" The line between saying and thinking is blurred. Did you say it or just think it?"

"When you give up junk, you give up a way of life. I have seen junkies kick and hit the lush and wind up dead in a few years. Suicide is frequent among ex-junkies. Why does a junky quit junk of his own will? You never know the answer to that question. No conscious tabulation of the disadvantages and horrors of junk gives you the emotional drive to kick. The decision to quit junk is a cellular decision, and once you have decided to quit you cannot go back to junk permanently any more than you could stay away from it before."

"Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, frightened flesh. Maybe I will find in yage what I was looking for in junk and weed and coke."

"The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite."

"If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically for the "higher ups" so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it."

"I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train..."

"Junk is surrounded by magic and taboos, curses and amulets."

"Shooting PG is a terrible hassle, you have to burn out the alcohol first, then freeze out the camphor and draw this brown liquid off with a dropper—have to shoot it in the vein or you get an abscess, and usually end up with an abscess no matter where you shoot it. Best deal is to drink it with goof balls ... So we pour it in a Pernod bottle and start for New Orleans past iridescent lakes and orange gas flares, and swamps and garbage heaps, alligators crawling around in broken bottles and tin cans, neon arabesques of motels, marooned pimps scream obscenities at passing cars from islands of rubbish ... New Orleans is a dead museum. We walk around Exchange Place breathing PG and find The Man right away. It's a small place and the fuzz always knows who is pushing so he figures what the hell does it matter and sells to anybody. We stock up on H and backtrack for Mexico. Back through Lake Charles and the dead slot-machine country, south end of Texas, nigger-killing sheriffs look us over and check the car papers. Something falls off you when you cross the border into Mexico, and suddenly the landscape hits you straight with nothing between you and it, desert and mountains and vultures; little wheeling specks and others so close you can hear wings cut the air (a dry husking sound), and when they spot something they pour out of the blue sky, that shattering bloody blue sky of Mexico, down in a black funnel ... Drove all night, came at dawn to a warm misty place, barking dogs and the sound of running water."

"I was standing outside myself trying to stop those hangings with ghost fingers. . . . I am a ghost wanting what every ghost wants—a body—after the Long Time moving through odorless alleys of space where no life is only the colorless no smell of death. . . . Nobody can breathe and smell it through pink convulsions of gristle laced with crystal snot, time shit and black blood filters of flesh"

"Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit --- Kid, it was tasty."

"America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting."

"Well as, one judge said to the other, 'Be just and if you can't be just be arbitrary.' Regret cannot observe customary obscenities."

"Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: The Mark Inside."

"A functioning police state needs no police."

"The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets."

"“Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence - their speech centres are destroyed - except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony."

"Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa’s face."

"The relation between an O.A. (Oblique Addict) and his R.C. (Recharge Connection) is so intense that they can only endure each other’s company for brief and infrequent intervals—I mean aside from recharge meets, when all personal contact is eclipsed by recharge process."

"Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand."

"I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Banisteriopsis caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group... There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence."

"Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror."

"The end result of complete cellular representation is cancer. Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand can live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus. (It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from more complex life-form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another — the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter.) Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host."

"Benway: Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell. This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?” “Nah I had to go relieve myself.” After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.” After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes you dig. That's one thing the asshole couldn’t do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eyes on the end of a stalk."

"You see control can never be a means to any practical end. ... Control can never be a means to anything but more control ... like Junk."

"The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell.... Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus. 'The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated.'"

"Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out."

"At all levels the drug trade operates without without schedule. Nobody delivers on time except by accident. The addict runs on junk time. His body is his clock, and junk runs through it like an hour-glass. Time has meaning for him only with reference to his need. Then he make his abrupt intrusion into the time of others, and, like all Outsiders, all Petitioners, he must wait, unless he happens to mesh with non-junk time."

"There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose "story "plot" "continuity"... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer."

"Senators leap up and bray for the Death Penalty with inflexible authority of virus yen... Death for dope fiends, death for sex queens (I mean friends) death for the psychopath who offends the cowed and graceless flesh with broken animal innocence of lithe movements. The black wind of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a vast probability curve... Populations blocks disappear in a checker game of genocide... Any number can play..."

"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative"

"So he imports this special breed of scorpions and feeds them on metal meal and the scorpions turned a phosphorescent blue color and sort of hummed. “Now we must find a worthy vessel,” he said. So we flush out this old goof ball artist and put the scorpion to him and he turned sort of blue and you could see he was fixed right to metal. These scorpions could travel on a radar beam and service the clients after Doc copped for the bread. It was a good thing while it lasted and the heat couldn't touch us. However all these scorpion junkies began to glow in the dark and if they didn't score on the hour metamorphosed into scorpions straight away. So there was a spot of bother and we had to move on disguised as young junkies on the way to Lexington. Bill and Johnny we sorted out the names but they keep changing like one day I would wake up as Bill the next day as Johnny. So there we are in the train compartment shivering junk sick our eyes watering and burning."

"Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!"

"Listen to my last words anywhere. Listen to my last words any world. Listen all you board syndicates and governments of the earth. And you powers behind what filth deals consumated in what lavatory to take what is not yours. To sell the ground from unborn forever-"

"I will tell you: "'the word.'" Alien Word 'the.' "'The word'" of Alien Enemy imprisons "'thee'" in Time. In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. The great skies are open. I Hassan i Sabbah 'rub out the word forever' If you I cancel all your words forever. And the of Hassan i Sabbah as also cancel. Cross all your skies see the silent writing of Brion Gysin Hassan i Sabbah: drew September 16, 1899 over New York."

"'Peoples of the earth, you have all been poisoned.' Convert all available stocks of morphine to apomorphine. Chemists, work round the clock on variation and synthesis of the apomorphine formulae."

"The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals. In 'Naked Lunch', 'Soft Machine' and 'Nova Express' I show who they are and what they are doing and what they will do if they are not arrested. Minutes to go. Souls rotten from their orgasm drugs, flesh shuddering from their nova ovens, prisoners of the earth to 'come out'. With your help we can occupy The Reality Studio and retake their universe of Fear Death and Monopoly-"

"I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I must do before I can go."

"Home is where your ass is and if you want to move you move your ass the first step is learning to change homes with someone else and have someone else's ass."

"‘In the fields workers are planting maize seeds under the direction of an overseer with staff and headdress. Close-up of a worker’s face. Whatever it is that makes a man a man, all feeling and all soul has gone out in that face. Nothing is left but body needs and body pleasures. I have seen faces like that in the back wards of state hospitals for the insane. Faces that live to eat, shit and masturbate.’"

"Before my father started using morphine again he sent me to a Japanese person to learn something called Karate. I learn these things fast because I am blank inside, and I have no special way of moving or doing things so one way is the same to me as another. ‘"

"I saw the Colonel empty his revolver and go down under ten wild boys. A moment later they tossed his bleeding head into the air and started a ball game. Just at dusk the wild boys got up and padded away. They left the bodies stripped to the skin many with genitals cut off. The wild boys make little testicles in which they carry their hasish and khat."

"The rudeness of many Americans depressed him, a rudeness based on a solid ignorance of the whole concept of manners, and on the proposition that for social purposes, all people are more or less equal and interchangeable."

"Lola's was not exactly a bar. It was a small beer-and-soda joint. There was a Coca-Cola box full of beer and soda and ice at the left of the door as you came in. A counter with tube-metal stools covered in yellow glazed leather ran down one side of the room as far as the jukebox. Tables were lined along the wall opposite the counter. The stools had long since lost the rubber caps for the legs and made horrible screeching noises when the maid pushed them around to sweep. There was a kitchen in back, where a slovenly cook fried everything in rancid fat. There was neither a past nor future in Lola's. The place was a waiting room, where certain people checked in a certain times."

"Lee watched the thin hands, the beautiful violet eyes, the flush of excitement on the boy's face. An imaginary hand projected with such force it seemed Allerton must feel the touch of ectoplasmic fingers caressing his ear, phantom thumbs smoothing his eyebrows, pushing the hair back from his face. Now Lee's hands were running down his ribs, the stomach. Lee felt the aching pain of desire in his lungs."

"A curse," said Lee. "Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain: 'homosexual'. I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion- just a minute, Doctore Kildare, this isn't your script. I might as well have destroyed myself, ending an existence which seemed to offer nothing but grotesque misery and humiliation. Nobler, I thought to die a man than life on, a sex monster. It was a wise old queen - Bob, we called her- who taught me that I had a duty to live and to bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink."

"He forced himself to look at the facts. Allerton was not queer enough to make a reciprocal relation possible. Lee's affection irritated him. Like many people who have nothing to do, he was very resentful of any claims on his time. He had no close friends. He disliked definite appointments. He did not like to feel that anybody expected anything from him. He wanted, so far as possible, to live without external pressure."

"He felt a killing hate for the stupid, ordinary, disapproving people who kept him from doing what he wanted to do. "Someday I am going to have things just like I want," he said to himself. "And if any moralizing son of a bitch gives me any static, they will fish him out of the river."

"Every time I hit Panama, the place is exactly one month, two months, six months more nowhere, like the progress of a degenerative illness. A shift from arithmetic to geometric progressive seems to have occurred. Something ugly and ignoble and subhuman is cooking in this mongrel town of pimps and whores and recessive genes, this degraded leech on the Canal."

"Stupid people can learn a language quiet and easy because there is nothing going on in there to keep it out."

"Many so called primitives are afraid of cameras. They think it can capture their soul and take it away. There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, sexual intensity, a sexual intensity of pursuit."

"Mexico city is a terminal of space-time travel, a waiting room where you grab a quick drink while you wait for your train. That is why I can stand to be in Mexico City for your train. That is why I can stand to be in Mexico City or New York. You are not struck; by the fact of being there at all, you are traveling. But in Panama, crossroads of the world, you are exactly so much aging tissue. You have to make arrangements with Pan Am or the Dutch Line for removal of your body. Otherwise, it would stay there and rot in muggy heat, under a galvanized iron roof."

"In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain."

"Sit down on your ass, or what's left of it after four years in the navy."

"Youth rebellion is a world wide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I don't believe they will calm down and be ad execs at thirty as the establishment would like to believe. Millions of young people all over the world are fed up with shallow unworthy authority running on a platform of bullshit."

"As a young child Audrey Carsons wanted to be writers because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle."

"According to legend the white race results from a nuclear explosion in what is now the Gobi desert some 30,000 years ago. The civilization and techniques which made the explosion possible were wiped out. The only survivors were slaves marginal to the area who had no knowledge of its science or techniques. They became albinos as a result of radiation and scattered in different directions. Some of them went into Persia northern India Greece and Turkey. Others moved westward and settled in the caves of Europe. The descendants of the cave-dwelling albinos are the present inhabitants of America and western Europe. In these caves the white settlers contracted a virus passed down along their cursed generations that was to make them what they are today a hideous threat to life on the planet. This virus this ancient parasite is what Freud calls the unconscious spawned in the caves of Europe on flesh already diseased from radiation. Anyone descended from this line is basically different from those who have not had the cave experience and contracted this deadly sickness that lives in your blood and bones and nerves that lives where you used to live before your ancestors crawled into their filthy caves. When they came out of the caves they couldn't mind their own business. They had no business of their own to mind because they didn't belong to themselves any more. They belonged to the virus. They had to kill torture conquer enslave degrade as a mad dog has to bite. At Hiroshima all was lost."

"Remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? "A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame."

"No job too dirty for a fucking scientist."

"Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal."

"Consider the impasse of a one-God universe. He is all-knowing and all-powerful. He can't go anywhere, since He is already everywhere. He can't do anything, since the act of doing presupposes opposition. His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic, having no friction by definition. So, He has to create friction: War, Fear, Sickness, Death, to keep his dying show on the road."

"Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? "And here is my good big centipede!" If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race."

"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape."

"After teaching a class in Creative Writing a few years back, my own creative powers fell to an all-time low. I really had a case of writer's block, and my idealistic young assistant complained that I simply sat around the loft doing absolutely nothing; which was absolutely true. This gave me time to think (as the French say): Can creative writing be taught?"

"My advice is to get a good agent and a good tax accountant if you ever make any money, and remember, you can't eat fame. And you can't write unless you want to write, and you can't want to unless you feel like it."

"Brainwashing, psychotropic drugs, lobotomy, and other more subtle form of psychosurgery; the technocratic control apparatus of the United States has at its fingertips new techniques if which fully exploited could make Orwell's 1984 seem like a benevolent utopia."

"All modern systems are riddled with contradictions."

"Concession is another control bind. History shows that once a government starts to make concessions it is on a one-way street."

"Any imposition of government censorship on the media is a step in the direction of State control, a step which big money is most reluctant to take."

"A government is never more dangerous than when embarking on a self-defeating or downright suicidal course."

"William S. Burroughs is one of the most pathetic figures in modern literature, his sadness made more poignant because it has been drawn out for so long. His cadaverous presence gave a hollow echo to a key scene in “Drugstore Cowboy,” in which he was a junkie ex-priest who has long decades of pain in his eyes. It didn't seem like acting. And in a recent documentary about his life, Burroughs came across as a man who walks around with something wounded inside, something that hurts so much that his spirit simply shut down."

"It would take me all night to tell about Old Bull Lee; let's just say now, he was a teacher, and it may be said that he had every right to teach because he spent all his time learning; and the things he learned were what he considered to be and called "the facts of life," which he learned, not only out of necessity but because he wanted to. He dragged his long, thin body around the entire United States and most of Europe and North Africa in his time, only to see what was going on.... there are pictures of him with the international cocaine set of the thirties — gangs with wild hair, leaning on one another, there are other pictures of him in a Panama hat, surveying the streets of Algiers.... He was an exterminator in Chicago, a bartender in New York, a summons-server in Newark. In Paris he sat at cafe tables, watching the sullen French faces go by. In Athens he looked up from his ouzo at what he called the ugliest people in the world. In Istanbul he threaded his way through crowds of opium addicts and rug-sellers, looking for the facts. In Chicago he planned to hold up a Turkish bath, hesitated just for two minutes too long for a drink, and, wound up with two dollars and had to make a run for it. He did all these things merely for the experience...."

"There's another book called The Naked Lunch which I couldn't even finish reading, but it's published, and I think the author should be in jail ..."

"Of the Beat triumvirate, Kerouac was probably both the most pathetic and least noxious. Psychologically, he was a mess—as indeed were Ginsberg and Burroughs. But, unlike them, Kerouac lacked the knack of sanctifying his pathologies and inducing others to bow down in obeisance."

"William Burroughs also believed in taking Vitamin/C."

"(“Did you ever look for women writers, in particular, or look to find your own experience in your reading?”) No, not when I was very young. It's not so much that I looked for women writers, but I had sense enough to know that, like Henry Miller, he wasn't writing for me. That's as far as I went. I knew that these guys, even the Beats-I thought they were nice, nice to see all those boys, and nice to see all the sexual feelings, but I knew it really wasn't written for me at all. It's not so much that I looked for women writers, as that I understood certain much admired writers, like Burroughs, weren't talking to me. There was nothing to get from them. Though at the same time I did get stuff from Proust. That talked to me, but all those ballsy American heroes had nothing to say to me, though my friends thought they were just hot shit, excuse me."

"Burroughs doesn't interest me at all as a novelist; his experimental, psychedelic stories have always bored me, so much that I don't think I've ever been able to read one. But Junky, the first book he wrote, a factual and autobiographical account of how he became a drug addict and how his addiction to drugs -- free choice augmenting what was already doubtless a certain proclivity -- made him a willing slave, furnishes an accurate description of what I believe to be the literary vocation, of the utter interdependence of the writer and his work and the way the latter feeds on the former, on all he is and all he does or does not do."

"I first heard of the 23 Enigma from William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark's ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23."

"Art is an act of the soul, not of the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams — their visions, really — we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We invoke the Great Creator when we invoke our own creativity, and that creative force has the power to alter lives, fulfill destinies, and answer our dreams."

"Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. And few ideas are worse than the ones we have about art."

"Anger is meant to be acted on. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us."

"I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow."

"Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself."

"The perfectionist is never satisfied. The perfectionist never says, "This is pretty good. I think I’ll just keep going." To the perfectionist, there is always room for improvement. The perfectionist call this humility. In reality, it is egotism. It is pride that makes us want to write a perfect script, paint a perfect painting, perform a perfect audition monologue. Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough — that we should try again. No. We should not."

"What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us."

"Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite — getting something down."

"Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult."

"Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness. We need to acknowledge this. All too often, we think only in terms of light: "And then the lightbulb went on and I got it!" It is true that insights may come to us as flashes. It is true that some of these flashes may be blinding. It is, however, also true that such bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary."

"All too often too often we try to push, pull, outline and control our ideas instead of letting them grow organically. The creative process is a process of surrender, not control."

"Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise."

"For most of us, the seductive and unstated part of "if I had enough time" is the unstated sentence "to hear myself think." In other words, we imagine that if we had time we would quiet our more shallow selves and listen to a deeper flow of inspiration. Again, this is a myth that lets us off the hook— if I wait for enough time to listen, I don't have to listen now, I don't have to take responsibility for what is trying to bubble up today."

"Life is a creative endeavor. It is active, not passive. We are the yeast that leavens our lives into rich, fully baked loaves. When we experience our lives as flat and lackluster, it is our consciousness that is at fault. We hold the inner key that turns our lives from thankless to fruitful. That key is "Blessing.""

"Focused on our good, focused on our abundance we naturally attract more of the same. This is spiritual law. Our consciousness is creative. What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of?"

"Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything."

"When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others."

"The growth of one blesses all. I am committed to grow in love. All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively."

"Love is not love if it compelled by reason and driven by logic — love exists in spite of those things, not because of them. It is a emotion which needs no fuel to fire it or oxygen to feed it; if you have to look for the why, then stop looking; it was never there at all."

"I honor my importance and the importance of others. None of us is dispensable, none of us is replacable. In the chorus of life each of us brings a True Note, a perfect pitch that adds to the harmony of the whole. I act creatively and consciously to actively endorse and encourage the expansion of those whose lives I touch. Believing in the goodness of each, I add to the goodness of all. We bless each other even in passing."

"I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature," he said, irritated at my failure to respond. "Nature's virtue is intact," I reassured him. "I just know some different laws."

"Gods are like that. It isn't enough for them to run everything. They want to be famous, too."

"In his sleep the voice of the land came to him like whispered lullabies. I did not choose you, said the land. I cannot speak except to those who hear me, and because it is in your nature to hear and listen, I spoke to you and lead you here to save me, save me, save me. Do you know the desert they will make of me? Encased in burning dust or layers of ice, either way I'll be dead. My whole purpose is to thrust life upward out of my soils, and feel the presence of living feet, and hear the songs of birds and the low music of the animals, growling, lowing, chittering, whatever voice they choose. That's what I ask of you, the dance of life, just once to make the man whose mother will teach him to be Quetzalcoatl and save me, save me, save me."

"They are beautiful monsters... And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty."

"I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration."

"If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how "important" it is?"

"I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so damnably much work."

"The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals. The choices they made were real. They mattered."

"He understood the tone of voice instinctively, as he always had; it was his greatest gift, to know emotions even better than the person feeling them."

"Only a fool can't be fooled."

"She thinks she's kept me. She would have kept me better if she had let me go now."

"I will love you forever, he thought. I am lying, he thought, and this time he was right."

"He was growing up. Soon he would be a man. He wondered what that would mean. Surely he could not have more required of him as an adult that had been required of him as a child. There could not be more."

"I wanted your songs. You wanted my songs more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs."

"You are mine, but you are not mine. I am yours, but you hardly know it."

"[He] looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed."

"There's always hope... even when there isn't faith. And sometimes, without hope or faith, there must be charity."

"Many a man isn't as good as his woman, but I never knew a husband who was better than his wife."

"To me, the truth is what actually happened. Yet it is impossible to know anything approaching the whole truth about past events. Even the people living them could not possibly understand. That truth is always out of reach."

"They never noticed that he was in fact what they only pretended to be."

"Justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all."

"A dagger has only a single point, but a traitor cuts from anywhere."

"He knew her too well to see her from the distance that pity requires. He loved her because he admired her. For bearing without complaint the burden the queen put on her. For still being gentle and loving when she had ample reason to be bitter."

"Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is the undoing of your strength: I am not a weak woman. I am not a little queen. And your mercy will be your undoing."

"Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was a virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was a gross insult."

"When he loved his bride it was not a queen he loved, but rather the girl as she might have been if she had not been destroyed in her childhood."

"A dreamer, a good man, a kind man who cared less for his plan than for the people in it."

"You're the sort of enemy your enemy must love."

"She did not send for him until she was afraid; she was not afraid until he undid her work; he did not undo her work until he was past loving her."

"I was the last to know what was happening to me. Or at least I was the last to know that I knew."

"It made me wonder if perhaps our ancestors' crimes were not in fact far more terrible than they claimed. After all, the only histories we possessed told their version of what happened, and in their accounts they were completely innocent."

"I want to see the king. Wonderful. I'm glad for you. Why are you so glad? Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant."

"There must be a special place in hell reserved for you. I've been to hell. It's a better place than this."

"Your father cares as little as we do. It's just that he tends to despair, while we are full of hope."

"I'm losing Savanna. That's good. No one should own someone else."

"I walked down the hill, forgot philosophy, and joined the human race again. Nobody was particularly glad to see me."

"I immediately felt so comfortable there. Or if not comfortable, at least willing to bear the discomforts because they fit the awkward places in my heart."

"You are not what you seem. So many people have said that that I'm beginning to think that's precisely how I do seem. What is it I seem to be that you have now discovered that I'm not?"

"There's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger."

"He deserved to die except that nothing deserves death."

"I had never believed I had a soul until then, when it laid bare a hurt more deep than any part of me could bear."

"Keep your freedom, keep your immortality, but somewhere along the line I hope you figure out what you're living forever for. What noble purpose you mean to achieve. Because you're no good to anyone here, not even yourselves."

"Heroes and victims are the product of the mood they were in when opportunity came or when circumstances were at their worst."

"For the first time I understood the haunting beauty of the song. It was the song of a killer who longed to die. It was the song of justice yearned for but not yet done."

"People's beliefs don't exist in isolation. Everyone's firmly held beliefs exert an enormous pressure on everyone else."

"You looked so intense. Whatever you were saying, you seemed to mean it, and it wasn't amusing at all. Started quite a fashion. People keep looking for purpose now. Complicates everything."

"But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost."

"Even the devil gives some justice to his victims, when they're beyond all help."

"Faithfulness had taken me by surprise. I wondered how long the phase would last."

"If you could stop the suffering and dying, and didn't stop it, then you are guilty. It is your fault. We kill no one. We do not let them kill us. We have nothing to do with them."

"If there's no place in the universe for a man to resist the thieves of freedom and still be called a good man, then I don't think there is any good or evil in the universe."

"You resent death. You regret death. But as for your own life, you know perfectly well that no one can threaten it at all. Death is something that happens to someone else."

"I'm passing through the world invisibly. Even when people see or speak to me it's as if I didn't exist, as if I had no right to exist. I tread across their lands and they don't see me. I act and act and act and nothing makes any difference in the world. But they touch me."

"I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions."

"You were born with compassion, only that also means that when people are cruel to you it cuts you deep. You won't understand that you have to walk right up to the ones who are being hateful and laugh in their faces and earn their respect. Instead you'll try to figure out what you did to make them mad at you."

"He exuded confidence without ever looking as if he wanted to make sure everyone else knew how confident he was."

"There was the chance that someday he would surprise her, that she would turn to face her husband and find a stranger in his place, a stranger who didn't approve of her and didn't want her in his life anymore."

"Even the good she found in him was really the goodness she had put in him, the goodness he had put on himself as a disguise in order to get her to marry him."

"This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard."

"There's some people who do things so bad it tears the fabric of the world, and then there's some people so sweet and good that they can feel it when the world gets torn. They see things, they know things, only they're so good and pure that they don't understand what it is that they're seeing."

"Even the most "Rational" people — the ones who claimed not to have a religion — were just as chauvinistic about their irreligion, sneering at and ostracizing the believers just the way the believers treated nonmembers of their own groups. It's a human universal."

"We were all victims of an oppressive system, but that mattered far less to us than our deep bonding with our owners."

"Adolescents never understand that the best way to avoid notice is to behave normally."

"She sounded how you'd expect talking to a tree to sound - bored out of her mind."

"Keeping secrets was the beginning of freedom."

"They gave me powers of thought and memory far beyond anything natural evolution would have given me, but that doesn't give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some dream. I decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it's my dream, I'm the dreamer."

"What I am seeing right now is a man who is so dominated by his mother that he is willing to throw away his marriage in order to protect her from the trauma of growing up and acting like an adult."

"I think if you left grownups to do what they really actually wanted most in the world to do, every single one of them would lie down and take a nap for the rest of their life. I know this because that's what every grownup does as soon as they're alone."

"She did love him, you know... It was a selfish, possessive love, but it was all she knew how to give."

"You never needed anybody. If you had ever bothered to come to know me, you'd know that that is the exact opposite of the truth. Well, well. So we part in utter ignorance of each other."

"The vision of the gods without the power of the gods. What a terrible gift.A glorious gift."

"When we intended to enjoy being cruel, we must transform our victim into either a beast or a god."

"His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life."

"What sort of arrogance did she have, even to imagine reaching back into the past and making changes? Who am I, she thought, if I dare to answer prayers intended for the gods?"

"She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as women judge men — not on the strength of their arguments, and not on their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, the strength of their soul, their compassion, and — ah, this above all — their conversation."

"How is clean, painless nonexistence any worse than clean, painless death?"

"We are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics."

"First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left?"

"The older you get, the more you believe in God, whatever face he wears."

"They don't know how to watch things. They don't know how to see anything but what they expect to see."

"You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you."

"You just refuse to leave them alone until they change their minds. Of their own free will."

"It was always from the love of strong women that he had found whatever joy had been granted him in his life."

"Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price."

"Love is random; fear is inevitable."

"Deep inside himself, in a place he didn't often go, where he kept the things he didn't like to think about but dared not forget, he knew that [she] was still alive somewhere, and somehow she was watching what he did, or at least looking in on him from time to time."

"What is this thing between women, like men are a joke that women all told each other long ago but men never get it."

"All children are manipulators."

"She had that irony in her eyes. Knowledge without wisdom. Power without purpose. Like me."

"[He] wasn't interested in meeting the kind of women who would come to one of those places looking for the kind of man who hoped to meet a woman there."

"You are exactly what you seem, and so you always assume that other people are, too."

"When you have enough money the law is a reed that will always bend your way."

"The ways of love are strange and hard: the love you want is always barred; the love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange."

"Why give you answers you wont believe? Well, answers I don't believe would be a step forward."

"Please open your mind to the possibility that I might be an honest man who was himself deceived."

"I've known too many men who never quite felt married no matter how many wives they'd been through. Their own and otherwise."

"Home is where the people who live there need me to come home to them, and worry about me when I'm gone. There's no such place on this earth, no matter how far I drive."

"What's so wrong with feeling sorry for myself? Better that than trying to get other people to feel sorry for me."

"Whenever I hear you saying, rise and shine, rise and shine, it makes me think how lucky dead people are!"

"Such a darling child, they would say, and pat her head. And Miriam would answer in her heart: you made my father a slave. You want us all dead. You are the river, you and all of Egypt. You are the river and as long as we stay beside you we are in danger of drowning."

"Honesty always sounds like impudence to the vain and stupid."

"No man can bear to live with a woman who speaks nothing but the truth to him."

"You really are children. You have no idea how power works, or who has it, or what you can actually do with it."

"He would rather lose his power for doing right, than keep his power by doing wrong. Because he loves his people more than he loves his office."

"Like all children they only wanted to be known, and cared little about giving that gift to others."

"God's hand is strange to us. He cares nothing for the moment, nothing for the feeble ambitions of men and women. He sees the road that flows onward forever."

"You'll find out I was never sand at all, but a seed, and out of death I'll make life. You can't break me. And whatever plan you have in mind, you can't make me."

"The man who has an intelligent child is doomed to spend his life justifying every decision he makes."

"God had answered her prayer, not with the thing she asked for, but rather the thing she wanted most in her heart."

"Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance."

"To be cut off from the land of the living, and yet not to be dead. How could I bear that? That's how most men live, and don't even know it."

"Some people can't see miracles when they're right in the middle of them. Better than seeing miracles that don't exist. You're determined to stand entirely alone, aren't you? That's where I've always stood."

"It never occurred to you that they might be flattering you, because you don't lie."

"It is the downfall of evil, that it never sees far enough ahead."

"This man, though, was of that rare type that knew what he wanted but didn't want anything badly enough to demand it or beg for it or hurt anyone else in the process of getting it."

"He was wild the way a mistreated dog becomes wild, not because it loves freedom, but because it has lost trust."

"She got out of the car in a smooth motion that [he] found attractive precisely because it did not seem designed to make men watch her do it."

"That was the most terrible thing that a woman could [??] to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector."

"Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?"

"How could you tell, when utter honesty and cynical manipulation would each account completely for the things she said and did?"

"Something had been given back to him. And because [she] had been a part of it, there was something between them now. A bond of loss, if loss could bind."

"Why do you bother asking, when you know the answer and you also know that you don't intend to believe it?"

"Why is doubt the one thing we're never skeptical of? We question other peoples' beliefs, and the more sure they are the more we doubt them. But it never occurs to us to doubt our own doubt. Question our own questions. We think our questions are answers."

"We're not a family. We're the opposite of a family. We're people so lonely that when we're together we make a black hole of loneliness and everything else gets sucked down into it and is never seen again."

"She never seemed to get near the edge. She lived on other people's edges. And when they fell off, she'd admire how pretty they looked as they fell."

"I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself. Can't be done. You can't please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn't mean anything if it's just you. There has to be somebody it matters to."

"You aren't the kind of guy who takes the law into his own hands. You left the law in other hands and it screwed you over pretty badly."

"I'm nobody's child. You're mine now. Not my child, but mine, to miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful."

"She going to be free now. She can go home to Jesus. Call me selfish, but I wanted her to go home with me."

"Knowing was better than not knowing. But not by much."

"You as stupid as they come. Of course, I say this with your best interests at heart. Most people are stupid. I don't hold it against them."

"I've known some bad people and some good people in my life, and it's the bad ones who live in fear, all the time. Cause they know their own hearts... And they think everyone else is just waiting to pull the same moves on them that they've got planned to pull on somebody else."

"Good people can't out-think evil, 'cause evil think of things good folks can't think of. Can't enter your head what evil do."

"We're both damaged property, I guess. Plenty of time for renovation."

"In Vanya's family, silence had never meant surrender, only tactical retreat."

"Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable."

"I never had you, not since you escaped from the womb."

"More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn't already understand, he never would."

"How strange it was that this other woman, this girl-child, should speak of her son so possessively, should speak of his future as if it were her own future."

"Marriage is about banality. Its purpose is banality, to create an environment of surpassing safety and predictability for young children to grow up in, the foundation of life, the root of inner peace."

"I don't know you, ma'am, and apparently I'm expected to die for you."

"Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?"

"Living with a god is not what it's cracked up to be. They think their women should be grateful just to have them around."

"How could I hurt her? She'd have to love me before I could do that."

"It was his father who had shrunk, who no longer had the power of the giant, of the god, to enfold him and keep him safe."

"How could you lose me, when you've never had me, never wanted me?"

"Having never been in control of his own life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free."

"In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?"

""Women's intuition" wasn't intuition at all, it was heightened observation, unconscious registration of subtle clues."

"I took the leap, yes, but I didn't like the ledge where I landed — I fought the bear, I kissed the princess, but now I don't want to be king. Well, where in the fairy tales did it ever say Cinderella had to like being queen?"

"If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?"

"Love can't conquer anything. Love can't make a scholar into a warrior. Loving her can't make her love me."

"Like running hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone."

"To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps... loosen them up."

"You are so intent that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you really believe without believing that you believe it."

"I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines — the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by."

"She knew that her feelings toward Bean were completely different. No such dreams and fantasies. Just a sense of complete acceptance. She belonged with Bean, not the way that a wife belonged with a husband or, God forbid, a girlfriend with a boyfriend, but rather way the left hand belonged to the right. They simply fit. Nothing exciting about it, nothing to write home about. But it could be counted on."

"“Part of the test,” said Sillain, “is seeing how well you obey orders.” “Then I fail,” said John Paul."

"He was only six, but he already knew that he hated it when he had to do what other people wanted, even when he knew that they were wrong. He didn't want to be a soldier. He didn't want to kill. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to obey stupid people."

"That reminded John Paul of what Andrew had said when he was teaching him to play chess. “You have to think ahead, the next move, the next move, the next move, to see where it’s all going to lead.” John Paul understood the principle as soon as Andrew explained it. But he stopped playing chess anyway, because he didn't care what happened to little plastic figures on a board of sixty-four squares."

"Why did people get so upset when somebody mentioned dying? Did they think that if they didn't mention it, it would skip a few people and leave them alive forever?"

"There are many steps on the continuum between controlling something and doing nothing at all."

"“My religion,” said Ms. Brown, “is to try to falsify all hypotheses.”"

"Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women."

"“Are all Polish men as arrogant and intrusive and rude as you?” “Few measure up to my standards, but most try.”"

"What does it matter if, by following my heart, I also fulfill someone else's plan?"

"Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by parents, you're never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate."

"It (i. e., advertising) was like horoscopes—enough blind stabs and some of them are bound to strike a target."

"“Am I hired?” “There is no legal way you can get me out of paying that much of my taxes.” “On the contrary, Mr. Wiggin. The tax laws are designed to trick people into paying more than they have to. That way the rich who are in the know get to take advantage of drastic tax breaks, while those who don’t have such good connections and haven’t yet found an accountant who does are tricked into paying ludicrously higher amounts.”"

"“You can afford me,” said Jane. “I’m cheap and you’re rich.”"

"Here's the bottom line. I promise you it's entirely legal, and he can't touch you for it. This is how the laws are written. They're designed to protect the fortunes of people as rich as you, while throwing the main tax burden on people in much lower brackets."

"“Did they program brattiness into you?” “That’s a trait I developed for myself,” she said. “Do you like it?”"

"My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them."

"If I have to choose between an omnipotent God who leaves the world in this condition, and a God who has only a little bit of power but really cares and tries to make things better, I'll take you every time. Go on playing God, Hyrum. You're not bad at it. Sometimes you kind of get it right."

"Such fools they were in Battle School, to let so few girls in. It left the boys completely helpless against a woman when they returned to Earth."

""And you actually were cuddly," said Carn. "No offense, but you were spunky." "If that's your word for 'bratty little asshole,' said Dink mildly."

"I don't care how loyal you think you're going to be, Dink. It's not in you. You're a brat and you always will be. So admit what a lousy follower you are, and go ahead and LEAD."

"'Waterloo was won,'" quoted Rackham, "'on the playing fields of Eton.'" "What the hell does that mean?" asked Carn Carby. "You never even went to Eton." "It was an analogy," said Rackham. "If you hadn't spent your entire childhood playing war games, you'd actually know something. You're all so uneducated."

"I've seen Australia and I've lived on an asteroid and I'd take the asteroid."

"Nafai knew the rule: when a man acts like a child, he's boyish, and everyone's delighted; when a boy acts the same way, he's childish, and everyone tells him to be a man."

"I think that I say those things that make people so angry, not because I really mean them, but because I simply thought of a clever way to say them. It's a kind of art, to think of the perfect way to say an idea, and when you think of it then you have to say it, because words don't exist until you say them." "A pretty feeble kind of art, Nyef, and I say you should give it up before it gets you killed."

"Why won't anyone ever answer my questions?" "Because you never stop asking them and especially because you keep asking them even when it's clear that nobody knows the answers." "Well, how do I know that they don't know the answer unless I ask?"

"How could you disguise your own thoughts so even you didn't know what you were thinking?"

"Here's my throat. I carry no weapon. You could have killed me at any time, even when I knew you were my enemy. Why did you need to deceive me into trusting you first? Were you afraid that death wouldn't bother me enough, unless I felt betrayed?"

"Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while."

"I will not be tamed, only persuaded. I will not be coerced or led blindly or tricked or bullied - I am willing only to be convinced. If you don't trust your own basic goodness enough to tell me what you're trying to do... Then you're confessing your own moral weakness and I'll never serve you."

"Wouldn't it have been better to change humanity so it no longer desired to destroy itself?"

"Not that human beings need to be violent in order to be human, but if you ever lose the will to control, the will to destroy, then it must be because you choose to lose it. My role was not to force you to be gentle and kind; it was to keep you alive while you decided for yourselves what kind of people you wanted to be."

"You think my apology means I'm weak. But it doesn't. It means I am trying to learn how to be strong."

"I was forgetting how it really was, I was remembering it through common, ordinary eyes, I was remembering it as the boy I was before, but now I remember that it wasn't me being weak or me being naked, or anything else that I should be ashamed of."

"I have no way of knowing that your story is not true — but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will close the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me — your life, your view of life — is the lie."

"It was not love at all, really, but rather a yearning for the honor and respect of the other men that held them. Pride, then... Indeed, all their connection with each other at this moment was tied up with the respect they felt they were earning by their actions."

"Keep me alive. Keep me alive long enough for me to conquer the animal within myself. Long enough for me to learn to partner myself with a woman who is better and stronger than me. Long enough for me to reconcile myself with my brothers. Long enough to be as good a man as my father, and as good as my mother, too."

"Coincidence is just the word we use when we have not yet discovered the cause."

"How does he do it? How does he master people without bluster or bullying? How does he make people fear him or love him, not in spite of his ruthlessness but because of it?"

"We are all fools when one wise man appears."

"Stop threatening me... I've lived in terror and I've come out of it. Kill me or not, torture me or not, it doesn't matter to me. Just decide what to do."

"Will I be coming to you as husband or a child? A partner or a student?"

"Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will — will strong enough that others bend to it for its own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth."

"If I wanted to doubt then I could doubt endlessly. But at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in."

"You always back off at the exact moment when you're about to tell the other person exactly what she needs to hear."

"The others are even more likely to obey their god. Which is? It dangles between their legs."

"Physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist. Oh, they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it."

"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."

"Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self we will become together."

"You take responsibility for us all. Without ever waiting to be told. So do all good people. That's what it means to be a good person."

"I interpreted all you did as weakness — but I should have known that it was wisdom and strength, freely shared with all of us, even the ones who don't deserve it."

"Doesn't love show its face when it satisfies the need of the loved one, for the loved one's sake alone?"

"I do matter, and despising me was the gravest error of their lives."

"Maybe he's growing up. Or maybe he just needed the right circumstances to discover the best in himself."

"Maybe what we really want is for our children to be the dominant ones! Maybe I'm trying to see my own ambitions fulfilled in them, and that would be wrong, so I should be content with what they are."

"Wasting our time? This is a waste of time, to live in peace and plenty with my wife and children? May I waste the rest of my life, then."

"I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn't make me less human, it just makes me less female."

"The barrier was only in my mind — which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I'm rejected. Well, maybe it's the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away."

"Just because you live every waking moment with dreams of controlling other people doesn't mean the rest of us do."

"Don't lie to me! Don't seem so normal when I know you have cut yourself off from me in your heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I'll never be able to take joy in it again."

"Frozen, right? But to others, it looks like you're calm as could be. That's why some of the others tease you so mercilessly sometimes. They think you're made of stone, and they want to break in and touch the human feelings. They just don't know that when you seem most stony, that's when you're the most frightened and breakable."

"That's what survival means, for me. I thought it was a matter of staying alive, but it isn't. Nobody lives forever anyway. It's how you're remembered. It's what your children thought of you, what they think of you after you're dead. That's survival."

"May the day when you need courage never come. Even as she said it, though, she knew the day would come."

"You're the only one that I would be glad to be close to forever, because all your secrets are bright and good and I love you for them."

"Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever."

"He hated the way they thought. He hated the way they didn't think. It was hard to imagine which of them he hated more."

"What cannot be healed has been healed. What was lost forever has been found. Therefore let that which cannot be forgiven be forgiven."

"Haven't you ever seen a 3-year-old when he makes a foolish blunder? He looks at whatever child or adult is nearby and screams at him "Look at what you made me do!" That's the moral universe that [they] always lived in."

"Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does."

"Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking."

"I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way."

"I believe in everything that seems true to me right now. I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe in now turn out to be false later."

"Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyways."

"We all choose our own teachers, don't we? I wonder if our choice of teacher shows anything about what our lives will be."

"Today, I saw a spark of decency. Let's blow on that spark and give it fuel."

"We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts."

"Out of respect for custom he treats me as if all women were equally worthless. He gives custom more respect than he gives me."

"He isn't insane, he's simply as trapped in his life as I am in mine. That makes us friends."

"What difference does it make, whether we keep our silence because [they] force us or because we're afraid they might force us?"

"I'll be dead and you'll think about this day and wonder which of us was more the slave, you or me!"

"Humans, in order to rise above the animals, had learned how to convert themselves into nothing more than organs or limbs or even disposable fingernails and hair of a larger metaphorical organism."

"Maybe if I could bear my life as it is for one day, for one hour, for one minute, I could forget my wish to be something else."

"I have no secret thoughts... Or rather, they're not secret because I've withheld them — if they're unknown, it's because no one asked."

"Boys always argued as if they knew then had the forces of logic on their side, even when they were being completely irrational."

"Only boys were so foolish that they actually believed their arguments were their reasons."

"If a father commands a son to commit a crime so terrible that the son can't do it and live with himself, then is it betrayal for the son to disobey his father?"

"You always do that. Make all the questions harder. I make them truer."

"Law can change how people behave when others are watching — that's all."

"Don't you hate it when somebody knows you better than you know yourself?"

"That's one of those questions, whether human beings are really capable of change, or if all seeming changes are really a matter of framing the existing character in a different moral situation."

"Which is the greater wrong? To hurt the unforgiving one, or hurt the one who has forgiven all?"

"It occurred to me that if my friends were loathsome, perhaps I needed to learn from my enemies."

"Wanting to is the whole lesson; all the rest is practice."

"The doctrine he was going to be teaching, starting tonight, was not the sort of ideology that would stir souls; no one would die for this religion. It would only attracts converts by promising a return to old tradition and by seeming to be the religion of the future."

"Just because you know I had no other choice doesn't make the anger go away. I understand that. But you're a man now. You can put away these childish things."

"They won't be required to sacrifice anything in order to belong to your assembly. A religion that is all sweetness, but no light; all form, but no substance; all tradition, but no precept."

"That's the way it was then, you see. Folks noticed other people's trouble every bit as quick as if it was their own."

"The billion billion paths of his life lay open before him, waiting for his first choices, for the first changes in the world around him to eliminate a million futures every second."

"Land was what they wanted, as if the mere ownership of dirt could turn a peasant into a squire."

"She grunted. “Nothing unusual?” “That’s right.” “Well, if you ask me, that’s pretty unusual right there, if a body was smart enough to notice it.”"

"It's plain that if I married you for brains I was plumb cheated."

"The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind."

"I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man."

"“I was ordained,” said the preacher. “No one ordains artists. They ordain themselves.” Just as Taleswapper had expected. The preacher retreated to authority as soon as he feared his ideas could not stand on their own merit. Reasonable argument was impossible when authority became the arbiter."

"As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys."

"Taleswapper looked at Miller. “I'm nothing,” he said. “A Christian isn’t nothing,” said Taleswapper. “I'm no Christian, either.” “Ah,” said Taleswapper. “A Deist, then, like Tom Jefferson.” The children murmured at his mention of the great man's name. “Taleswapper, I'm a father who loves his children, a husband who loves his wife, a farmer who pays his debts, and a miller without a millstone.”"

"Sunday morning, he decided, is designed to let sinners have a sample of the first day of eternity in hell."

"“I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this chapel were shut, And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door, So I turned to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore, And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.”"

"“I don’t hold with prophets,” said Alvin. “Near as I can tell, they end up just as dead as the next man.”"

"The most evil creatures don’t desire the destruction of everything—they only desire to exploit it for themselves."

"“You must be a prophet right enough,” said Alvin Junior, “cause I can’t understand a thing you said.”"

"“What kind of stupid tale is that, when we just have to look at each other to know it isn’t true?” “It has problems, I admit.”"

"Just because you believe it doesn’t make it so."

"Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth."

"If something just plain didn’t make sense to Alvin, he didn’t believe it, and no amount of quoting from the Bible would convince him. Now Taleswapper was telling him that he was right to refuse to believe things that made no sense."

"A duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other."

"It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit."

"Religion makes them crazy. Not a woman I ever met wasn't crazy with religion."

"You can't tell real from a rutabaga."

"Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in our lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same."

"“I've done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.” “In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.” “He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.” “An obnoxious child.”"

"It is a weak man who blames his failures on the strength of others."

"A man who can't read only knows what other folks tell him."

"“I’ve never seen a soft heart turn hard,” said Taleswapper. “At least not without good reason.”"

"I own the whole world, and folks haven't been keeping up too well on the payments."

"This is what I want to do forever, each one thought. Rise in the morning, come to the mill, and work all day with him beside me. Never mind that the wish was impossible. Never mind that they might never see each other again, once the boy left for his apprenticeship back in the place of his birth. That only added to the sweetness of the moment, which would soon become a memory, would soon become a dream."

"Men like Jackson were so upright and honest-seeming, but Hooch knew that there wasn't no such thing as a good man, just a man who wasn't bought yet, or wasn't in deep enough trouble, or didn't have the guts to reach out and take what he wanted. That's all that virtue ever boiled down to, so far as Hooch ever saw in his life."

"No, no, no, Hooch told himself silently. Getting even don't amount to nothing in this world. Getting even only gets you behind. The best revenge is to get rich enough to make them all call you sir, that's how you get even with these boys."

"When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth."

"The White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man's way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn't need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all."

"What is the White man? What does he do? The White man is like a human being, but he crushes all other living things under his feet. Then why, O Ta-Kumsaw, when I look into your heart, why is it that you do not wish to hurt the White man, that you do not wish to kill the White man? The White man doesn't know the evil that he does. The White man doesn't feel the peace of the land, so how can he tell the little deaths he makes? I can't blame the White man. But I can't let him stay. So when I make him leave this land, I won't hate him."

"She can't help her red skin, and she isn't heathen. In fact, she's a Baptist, which is almost like being Christian, only louder."

"Lolla-Wossiky is left like a White man then. Cut off from the land. Ground crunching underfoot. Branches snagging. Roots tripping. Animals running away."

"He didn't know if he had the right or not. Didn't know if he was taking like a Red man, just what the land offered, or stealing like a White man, murdering whatever it pleased him to kill."

"Road poured out into a place of meadows and a few White man's buildings. Lots of wagons. Horses posted and tied, grazing on the meadow grass. Sounds of metal hammers ringing, chopping of axes in the wood, screech of saws going back and forth, all kinds of White-man forest-killing sounds. A White man's town."

"What a silly god, he makes everybody born bad to go to burning hell. Why so mad? All his fault!"

"Very bad thing, killing little boy. But maybe Red man knows about whisky-Red, very thirsty, making crazy. Not like killing man to take his house or his woman or his land, like White man all the time."

"The fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place."

"“We don’t go to Fort Chicago,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “We go to the holy place.” “A church?” asked Alvin. Ta-Kumsaw laughed. “You White people, when you make a place holy you build walls so nothing of the land can get in. Your god is nothing and nowhere, so you build a church with nothing alive inside, a church that could be anywhere, it doesn’t matter—nothing and nowhere.” “Well what does make a place holy?” asked Alvin. “Because that’s where the Red man talks to the land, and the land answers.”"

"The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight."

"We've seen the worst that men can do, pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don't mean that someday we won't see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can't we?"

"As he had so many times before, Taleswapper addressed a few silent words to God, which always came down to this question: Why do you put us to so much trouble, when it all comes to naught in the end?...And, as usual, God had nothing much to say to Taleswapper when his questioning was done."

"Wasn't that their natural right, to know the truth so as to be able to let the truth lead them to do good or evil, as they chose?"

"“Black with hate,” said Becca. “You are gathering your people with hate.” “Can you imagine conducting a war with love?” asked Ta-Kumsaw. “That’s a reason to refuse to make war at all,” she said gently."

"“I want to know how many years I got.” “Many,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Or few. All that matters is what you do with however many years you have.”"

"We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death."

"What the White man had won with so much blood and dishonesty was not the living land of the Red man, but the corpse of that land. It was decay that the White man won. It would turn to dust in his hands, Alvin knew it."

"At night in his own bed, Alvin listened to the distant greensong, still warm and beautiful, still bright and hopeful even though the forest was getting so sparse, even though the future was so dim. Cause there's no fear of future in the song of life, just the ever-joyful present moment. That's all I want right now, thought Alvin. The present moment, which is good enough."

"Slavery, that was a kind of alchemy for such White folk, or so they reckoned. They calculated a way of turning each bead of a Black man's sweat into gold and each moan of despair from a Black woman's throat into the sweet clear sound of a silver coin ringing on the money-changer's table. There was buying and selling of souls in that place. Yet there was nary a one of them who understood the whole price they paid for owning other folk."

"She don't set no store to see a king. Her pa a king back in Africa, and they shoot him dead. Them Portuguese slavers show her what it mean to be a king—it mean you die quick like everybody, and spill blood red like everybody, and cry out loud in pain and scared—oh, fine to be a king, and fine to see one. Do them White folk believe this lie?"

"That's how it goes within a family. You think you know each other so well, and so you don't bother hardly getting to know each other at all."

"Didn't he know that when you work to destroy, you invite the Destroyer?"

"And then he realized that he could never make anything out of the Unmaker, could never make the Unmaker do or be anything because it was only Undoing and Unbeing. It wasn't the Unmaker he needed to call to, it was all the living things around him, the trees, the grass, the earth, the air itself. It was the greensong that he needed to restore."

"The Maker is the one who is part of what he makes."

"He'd undone all he could. You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can't call back the futures that your bad decisions lost. He didn't need no philosopher to tell him that."

"Peggy chose her words to be true, and therefore beautiful, and therefore good."

"'A woman's wisdom is her gift to women,'" Peggy quoted. "'Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to God.'"

"Some men are great enough that they can love a whole woman, and not just part of her."

"Perhaps you don't desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you."

"I've learned much, Father, and this above all: that no station in life is above any other, if it's occupied by someone with a good heart."

"You can't change what you don't understand."

"Last night Alvin just got mad, which she said would only guarantee that he'd stay stupid."

"Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old."

"In a way, he lost some of himself, some of his knack, and therefore some of the choices he might have had in life. But in losing those, he gained so much more freedom, so much more power, that he was clear winner in the bargain."

"I don't know why people who got what they need to be happy don't just go ahead and be happy."

"And I says back to him, “Calvin, sounding like an educated man don’t make you educated,” and he says back to me, “I'd rather be ignorant and sound educated than be educated and sound ignorant,” and I said, “Why?” and he says to me, “Because if you sound educated then nobody ever tests you to find out, but if you sound ignorant they never stop.”"

"Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn't quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?"

"Do you speak Scorn and Mockery to everyone? Or just to your betters?"

"You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they'll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don't change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully."

"“A liar sees lies,” said Taleswapper. “Even when they aren’t there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can’t stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be.”"

"“You speak metaphorically, I hope,” said Peggy. “I hope not,” said Becca. “Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.”"

"My own feeling is that human happiness is a very random thing, and bestows itself willy-nilly, and there's not much deserving about the matter."

"Perhaps I'm hiding from myself. Perhaps I don't want to be what I'm supposed to be. Or perhaps I don't want to keep living the life I already started to live."

"When people say perhaps it's cause they're lying. Either they don't believe the thing they're saying, or they do believe it only they don't want to admit they do."

"You spend your whole life grieving for those who haven't died yet."

"He could afford to be generous, since he didn't have to pay for it himself. Most virtues were like that. People could take pride in how virtuous they were, but the fact was that as soon as virtue got expensive or inconvenient, it was amazing how fast it gave way to practical concerns."

"He had left home to get away, not to go toward anything. There was no greater freedom than that."

"Verily learned to live with constant deception, hiding what he was and what he saw and what he felt and what he did from everyone around him. It was only natural that he should be drawn to the study of law."

"By the time Verily was sixteen, a sturdy and rather good-looking young man of some education and impeccable manners, he had become a thoroughgoing skeptic. If the dogmas about witchery could be so hopelessly wrong, how could any of the teachings of the ministers be relied upon? It left Verily Cooper at loose ends, intellectually speaking, for all his teachers spoke as if religion were the cornerstone of all other learning, and yet all of Verily's actual studies led him to the conclusion that sciences founded upon religion were uncertain at best, utterly bogus at worst."

"Alvin had met true evil in his life, but he still persisted in thinking it was awful rare, and the word was bandied about too much by those who didn't understand what real badness was."

"“You're such a liar.” “But I’m a beautiful liar, don’t you think?” She flashed her best smile at her friend. “I don’t understand what men see in women anyway,” her friend answered. “Hexes or no hexes, as long as a woman has her clothes on a man can’t see what he’s interested in anyhow.”"

"Alvin wondered if it was true—if all men had evil in their hearts, and those men as were good, maybe they were simply the ones who controlled theirselves so well they could act contrary to their heart's desire. But if that were so, then no man was good, not one."

"“Lookit that,” he said. “A lawyer who knows how to do something useful. That’s a miracle.”"

"It has been my experience that the better a man you are, the more folks there are who resent you for it, and find occasion to get angry at you no matter how kindly meant your deeds may be."

"What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he's done, and that's as good as any man ever gets."

"There were always people searching for the Unmaker, for some awful destructive power outside themselves. Poor fools, they always thought that Destruction was merely destruction, they were using it and when they were done with it, they'd set to building. But you don't build on a foundation of destruction. That's the dark secret of the Unmaker, Alvin thought. Once he sets you to tearing down, it's hard to get back to building, hard to get your own self back. The digger wears out the ground and the spade. And once you let yourself be a tool in the Unmaker's hand, he'll wear you out, he'll tear you down, he'll dull you and hole you and all the time you'll be thining you're so sharp and fine and bright and whole, and you never go till he lets go of you, lets you drop and fall. What's that clatter? Why, that was me. That was me, sounding like a wore-out tool. What you leaving me for? I still got use left in me? But you don't, not when the Unmaker's got you."

"What Alvin figured out was that when you're Making, you don't use people like tools. You don't wear them out to achieve your purpose. You wear yourself out helping them achieve theirs. You wear yourself out teaching and guiding, persuading and listening to advice and letting folks persuade you, when it happens they're right."

"Whenever the law gets its hands on you, those who use the law to their own advantage will also turn it against you. Don't put your trust in the laws of men, Alvin. They were designed by strong men to improve their power over weaker ones."

"I think that a good person can sometimes do wrong out of ignorance or weakness or wrong thinking, but when hard times come, the goodness wins out after all. And a bad person can often seem good and trustworthy for a long time, but when hard times come, the evil in him gets revealed."

"Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness."

"Verily wondered what the man could have the audacity to say, in the face of such evidence—what whining, sniveling complaint or protest he might utter."

"“Our savior will resurrect us,” said Peggy, “but I haven’t noticed that Christians end up any less dead at the end of life than heathens.”"

"You think this because you are a nasty person by nature, Calvin, and you don't understand nice people. To you, the end of existence is to control things, and so you will never build anything, but rather will try to take control of what is already in existence. Your brother, though, is by nature a Maker, as you explain it; therefore he cares nothing about who rules, but only about what exists."

"Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” when the saying should have been, “Where there’s scandalous lies there’s always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence."

"Andrew Jackson neatly resolved the issue by walking into congress and placing his hand on the Bible they kept there as a reminder of all the virtues they worked so hard to get the voters to believe they possessed."

"And he wanted a wife. He wanted to raise children. He wanted to prove that goodness wasn’t beaten into children, that fear was not the fount from which virtue flowed. He wanted to be able to gather his family in his arms and know that not one of them dreaded the sight of him, or felt the need to lie to him in order to have his love."

"My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn’t you."

"The Lord took twice the time making thee, Alvin Smith, cause it took that long to put the mischief in."

"War was never so careful as to inflict suffering only where it was merited."

"“Don’t you think it’s ironic that you have no idea what you’re supposed to do,” said Verily, “and yet so many people have gone to so much trouble to prevent you from doing it?”"

"Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it."

"“Calvin, what kind of trouble are you planning to make?” “No trouble at all,” said Calvin, annoyed. “Why do you think I want to cause trouble?” “Because you are awake.”"

"“This is Alvin Smith,” said Cooper. “He’s a man of inestimable abilities, but only because nobody has cared enough to estimate them.”"

"“You,” said Purity, “have been long enough out of England to pick up some American brag.” “But surrounded by Americans as I am,” said Cooper, “my brag is like a farthing in a sack of guineas.”"

"“Don’t press her,” said Cooper. “If someone decides to leave something unsaid, my experience is that everyone is happier if they don’t insist on his saying it.”"

"The desire to force others to bend or break to her will was always there, usually hidden deeply enough that she could forget she had that wish within her, but occasionally surfacing to dangle the ripe fruit of power just out of her reach. She knew, as few others did, that the power to coerce depended entirely on the fear or weakness of other human beings. It was possible to use coercion, yes, but in the end you found yourself surrounded only by the weak and fearful, with all those of courage and strength arrayed against you."

"“I always play with everybody,” said Honoré. “It is my vocation. God put me on the earth to do with people what cats do to mice. Play with them, chew the last bit of life out of them, them pick them up in my mouth and drop them on people’s doorsteps. That is the business of literature.”"

"When I am drunk I am at my best. It is the national knack of the French."

"“I don’t have to be a gentleman,” said Balzac. “I am an artist.”"

"Once you have the gallows, you'll find new reasons to hang people from it."

"To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it's always pleasantly."

"The first of a thousand lies. Truth flowed to Micah Quill, was sucked in and disappeared, and emerged again looking ever so much like it used to, but changed subtly, at the edges, where none would notice, so that simple truth became a complicated fabric indeed, one that could wrap you up so tightly and close you off from the air until you suffocated in it."

"“This is today’s puzzle,” he said. “If the act of denial can be taken as proof of the crime, how can an innocent man defend himself?” The tithingmen caught him by the arms. “Come along now, Mr. Emerson, and don’t go trying any philosophy on us.” “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Waldo. “Philosophy would be wasted against such sturdy-headed men as you.” “Glad you know it,” said the tithingman proudly. “Wouldn’t want you thinking we weren’t true Christians.”"

"Denmark nursed that anger and it kept him free."

"It wasn't so bad being a slave when your owner was yourself and stood up for you."

"Around here, ma'am, if folks got they mouth open, if they ain't eating then they lying."

"“I knew God had heard my prayer when I learned that it was you and no other who drew this case.” “One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers?”"

"“Are you all right, sir?” asked Hezekiah. “Just fighting over old battles in my mind,” said John. “It’s the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I’m the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays.”"

"“I have no fear of war,” said Arthur Stuart. “That’s when kings get to show their mettle.” “You’re thinking of chess,” said Margaret. “In war, everyone has their chance to bleed.”"

"Once he had been so formidable that he was surrounded by enemies. Now even his enemies has lost interest in him. What clearer sign of failure could you find than that?"

"I'm neutral on lying, seeing as how there's times when the truth just hurts people."

"Folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn't know about something bad, it wasn't happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true."

"“The woman is the subtlest beast in the garden,” said Papa Moose, “now that snakes can’t talk.”"

"“Hey, you’re getting to be almost worth how much it costs to feed you.” “Good thing, ’cause I got no plan to eat less.”"

"Every terrible thing in the world was caused by a whole combination of things. But everybody wanted to narrow it down to one cause—and not even the real one. Much better to have one cause—one person to punish. Then the unbearable could be borne."

"Knowing something may be a terrible burden to bear, but it holds no danger to them as aren't afraid of truth."

"“Don’t talk to me like you understand my sins.” “Don’t talk to me like you know what I do and do not understand.” Alvin chuckled grimly. “Oh, that mouth you’ve got.” “You can’t answer what I said, so you’re going to talk about my saying it.”"

"“A man like that thinks that fear can win loyalty.” “Plenty of masters with a lash who can testify it works.” “Don’t win loyalty, just obedience, and only while the lash is in the room.”"

"The dreamers always seem to think their dream is worth the price that other people will pay. They also delude themselves that they will control whatever evil they use to try to bring about their dream."

"This is serious, and you gotta keep your mind open in case an idea comes along—you want there to be some room for it to fit in."

"Sometimes it felt to him as though he's spent most of his life traveling, and never quite got to anywhere that mattered. Then again, that might be as good a description of what life was supposed to be as anyone ever thought of. The only real destination was death, and our lives consisted of finding the most circuitous and pleasant path to get there."

"How short life is for fools."

"It is the essence of dignity to pretend to desire what you cannot prevent."

"“He’s young,” she said. “We’ve all been guilty of that sin,” said Alvin. “And some never get over it.”"

"La Tia was fearless, but that could mean either that she had no guile or that she had no conscience."

"That is the ultimate power, to stare death in the face and be unafraid."

"“I’m a terrible salesman,” he finally said. “I always tell the truth about what I’m selling, and then nobody buys it.”"

"“I see Alvin with a son. That what he want most.” “I see him with a woman,” said Rien. “That is what he miss the most.” “I see him kneeling by a child’s grave,” said Dead Mary. “That is what he fears the most.”"

"“Everybody thinks they want to see the truth,” said Tenkswa-Tawa. “That’s one of the lies we tell ourselves.”"

"Arthur had heard Peggy say that she didn't wish for more comfortable furniture, because if the chairs were softer, company would be inclined to stay longer."

"“I don’t plan to die for any cause,” said Jim Bowie. “Nor any man, excepting only myself. I know that ain’t noble, but it prolongs my days, which is philosophy enough for me.”"

"I was born with more power inside myself than I ever dreamed. But along with it there came no more sense than any other idiotic kid. Somewhere along in here I need to grow up into a man I can stand to live with. A man who doesn't just survive, but deserves to."

"The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa."

"Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won."

"Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey."

"A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets."

"When I got back from the war in 1946 people didn't want the Mr. Smith kind of movie any more, and I refused to make war pictures."

"I've always been skeptical of people who say they lose themselves in a part. Someone once came up to Spencer Tracy and asked, "Aren't you tired of always playing Tracy?" Tracy replied, "What am I supposed to do, play Bogart?" You have to develop a style that suits you and pursue it, not just develop a bag of tricks."

"If you can do a part and not have the acting show."

"I've sort of gotten into the habit of looking for the vulnerable guy, the guy who makes mistakes, the guy who can't figure things out all the time but keeps at it."

"Hollywood dishes out too much praise for small things I won't let it get me, but too much praise can turn a fellow's head if he doesn't watch his step."

"I'm going to be with Gloria now."

"Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners."

"I don't go to movies very much. In fact, I never cared for them. But when I do go, I like to watch Jimmy Stewart. I met him when he was making Strategic Air Command at St. Petersburg, Fla. and like him very much."

"Rope: Rupert Cadell"

"Harvey: Elwood P. Dowd"

"It's a Wonderful Life: George Bailey"

"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: Jefferson Smith"

"Vertigo: Detective John 'Scottie" Ferguson"

"The Philadelphia Story: Macaulay 'Mike' Connor"

"Rear Window: L.B. Jeffries"

"A friend came over to the house a few days ago and read one of my poems. He came back today and asked to read the same poem over again. After he finished reading it, he said, "It makes me want to write poetry.""

"I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace."

"if a girl likes me a lot and starts getting real nervous and suddenly begins asking me funny questions and looks sad if I give the wrong answers and she says things like, "Do you think it's going to rain?" and I say, "It beats me," and she says, "Oh," and looks a little sad at the clear blue California sky, I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time Instead of me."

"Forsaken, fucking in the cold, eating each other, lost runny noses, complaining all the time like so many people that we know"

"Thinking hard about you I got on the bus and paid 30 cents car fare and asked the driver for two transfers before discovering that I was alone."

"Everybody wants to go to bed with everybody else, they're lined up for blocks, so I'll go to bed with you. They won't miss us."

"There are seductions that should be in the Smithsonian Institute, right next to The Spirit of St. Louis."

"Everything smelled of sheep. The dandelions were suddenly more sheep than flower, each petal reflecting wool and the sound of a bell ringing off the yellow. But the thing that smelled the most like sheep, was the sun itself. When the sun went behind a cloud, the smell of sheep decreased, like standing on some old guy's hearing aid, and when the sun came back again, the smell of the sheep was loud, like a clap of thunder inside a cup of coffee."

"... the Coleman lantern is the symbol of the camping craze that is currently sweeping America, with its unholy white light burning in the forests of America."

"All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds."

"I didn't know the full dimensions of forever, but I knew it was longer than waiting for Christmas to come."

"Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?"

"Not in the time of pleasure Hope doth set her bow; But in the sky of sorrow, Over the vale of woe. Through gloom and shadow look we On beyond the years! The soul would have no rainbow Had the eyes no tears."

"Who drives the horses of the sun Shall lord it but a day; Better the lowly deed were done, And kept the humble way."

"The rust will find the sword of fame, The dust will hide the crown; Ay, none shall nail so high his name Time will not tear it down."

"The happiest heart that ever beat Was in some quiet breast That found the common daylight sweet, And left to Heaven the rest."

"Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless."

"Man's power appears to have increased out of all proportion to his wisdom. He has never been in a better position to build a healthy, happy, and productive world; yet things have perhaps never seemed so black."

"The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called "conditioning". In operant conditioning we "strengthen" an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent."

"Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive."

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."

"We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement."