Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.

There are dreams stronger than death. Men and women die holding these dreams.

Poetry is a dance music measuring buck-and-wing follies along with the gravest and stateliest dead-marches.

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

You know being born is important to you. You know nothing else was ever so important to you.

What of the Wright boys in Dayton? Just around the corner they had a shop and did a bicycle business-and they wanted to fly for the sake of flying. They were Man the Seeker, Man on a Quest. Money was their last thought, their final absent-minded idea. They threw out a lot of old mistaken measurements and figured new ones that stood up when they took off and held the air and steered a course. They proved that "the faster you go the less power you need."