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.
Robert Penn WarrenI've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.
Robert Penn WarrenFor what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
Robert Penn WarrenYet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selflessness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?
Robert Penn Warren