There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.

To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives.

Our tears fatten upon our memories of joy.

To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self- solitude is the enemy of well- being.

Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position.