To be an American is not...a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea--and history is the image of that idea.

Dying--shucks! If you kin handle the living, what's to be afraid of the dying?

I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.

...a man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.

To be an American is not...a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea--and history is the image of that idea.