History is not melodrama, even if it usually reads like that.

There ain't anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity. Can you figure out a single thing you really please-God like to do you can do and keep your dignity? The human frame just ain't built that way.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we?

If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it...if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you.

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people.