If one is going to change things, one has to make a fuss and catch the eye of the world.

Today, what most people live in, or with, is the less-than-nuclear family. Working fathers are absent from home during most of the day, the children are schooled outside it, and practically all women who work for money must go outside to earn their living.

Poets are the leaven in the lump of civilization.

reaction isn't action - that is, it isn't truly creative.

those who despair of life are not long for it.

If there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, there is nothing more ubiquitously pervasive than an idea whose time won't go.

what society requires from art ... is that it function as an early warning system.