For I had expected always Some brightness to hold in trust, Some final innocence To save from dust

When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.

History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.

When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course.

I think continually of those who were truly great.

There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife - a tyrannical midwife.

All that you can imagine you already know.

So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself

All the posters on the walls All the leaflets in the streets Are mutilated, destroyed or run in rain, Their words blotted out with tears, Skins peeling from their bodies In the victorious hurricane.

Jesus Christ is the Father of Fatherless.

What gets a steer from 80 to 1100 pounds in fourteen months is tremendous quantities of corn, protein and fat supplements, and an arsenal of new drugs.

Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgments which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and destroyed by private persons?

For ye suffer fools gladly seeing ye yourselves are wise.

I was famous overnight. I went from nowhere to being really big.

Everyone would have bigger and safer cars if they didn't have those CAFE standards: corporate average fuel economy.

The real reason women fall in love abroad is not that they are free of domestic inhibitions but that they translate their love of stone and place into love of flesh. ... Is this true?

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

I'm not heart-broken if I don't have a hit. But I guess a hit would help. It makes the money go up a bit.

I'm not saying I don't ever improvise because I do that quite a lot, especially with other people, but generally I've got an idea in my head and then I'll pursue it 'til I get there.