A man without words is a man without thought.

Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive?

And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

I have seen too many men go down, and I never permit myself to forget that one day, through accident or under the charge of a younger, stronger knight, I too will go down.

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

These too are of a burning color--not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.