Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by one's own human failings. They are the only consistent art in the United States which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go. When understood in their more profound implication, they are a corrective, an attempt to draw a line upon man's own limitless assertion.

Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled 'file and forget.'

The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.

We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.

I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms.