All of those on the left, as I am, have always vastly preferred the democratic society over the hierarchical society and still do, but the democratic culture doesn't exist without highly informed citizens capable of thinking well, and if you have schools in which 40 percent of the people coming out of them cannot make change for a dollar, you don't have a democracy. You have a sibling society.

When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, not his teaching.

Tragedies are about the depths that call up to certain men and insist that they descend.

One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life. I still feel surprised that such various substances can find shelter and nourishment in a poem. A poem in fact may be a sort of nourishing liquid, such as one uses to keep an amoeba alive. If prepared right, a poem can keep an image or a thought or insights on history or the psyche alive for years, as well as our desires and airy impulses.

Those of us who make up poems have agreed not to say what the pain is.

Sociological prose is generally written without images in an exact form for an academic audience.

If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth: Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.