A symbol serves to combine heart and intellect.

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

Everything seems an echo of something else.

I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

Goodness . . . You got to make it out of badness . . . Because there isn't anything else to make it out of.

The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of.

A boy is a magical creature - you can lock him out of your workshop, but you can't lock him out of your heart.

It does not matter how strong you are. You are to be my wife, and I will not have the woman I love put herself at risk. Ever.

Always engage yourself positively with situations.

Rise and grind... the money ain't gonna wait for you while you sleep son.

You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.

With me, you never know what is going to happen

It is the leader's job to hold hope high.

People who don't make mistakes are no bloody good to you at all.

It is easy at any moment to resign the possession of a great fortune; to acquire it is difficult and arduous

No matter how sad we might be, the universe is still planning our happiness.