The asking and the answering which history provides may help us to understand, even to frame, the logic of experience to which we shall submit. History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.

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

Nobody had ever told me that anything could be like this.

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.

There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain.

Poets, we know, are terribly sensitive people, and in my observation one of the things they are most sensitive about is money.

I reckon I am a smart aleck, but it is just a way to pass the time.