When you have examined all the illusions of life and know that there isn't any reality, but you nevertheless go on, then you are a mature human being. You accept the idea that it is all mask and illusion and that people are in disguise. You see the crumbl

The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

Every heart is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion.

A lawyer I once knew told me of a strange case, a suffragette who had never married. After her death, he opened her trunk and discovered 50 wedding gowns.

I think most people dont like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly dont want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me.

If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized.

Twice in his life Eugene Victor Debs took the long leap to the Ultima Thule of prison, passing beyond the realm of the acceptable into the nonacceptable, from respectability into the criminal community of the monster who was an enemy to the people.