We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

Ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various reasons having to do with emotional safety, we have very strong ties of whose meaning and consequences in actuality we have no clear understanding.

I find righteous denunciations of the present state of the language no less dismaying than the present state of the language.

This desire to fashion, to shape, a self and a life has all but gone from a contemporary culture whose emphasis, paradoxically enough, is so much on self.

Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.

The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals.

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.