Goodness . . . You got to make it out of badness . . . Because there isn't anything else to make it out of.
Robert Penn WarrenI heard somebody open and shut the gate to the barn lot, but I didn't look around. If I didn't look around it would not be true that somebody had opened the gate with the creaky hinges, and that is a wonderful principle for a man to get hold of... What you don't know know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and after I got hold of that principle I became an Idealist... If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.
Robert Penn WarrenThere was nothing particularly wrong with them; they were just the ordinary garden variety of human garbage.
Robert Penn WarrenWhat if angry vectors veer Round your sleeping head, and form. There's never need to fear Violence of the poor world's abstract storm.
Robert Penn WarrenYou have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of.
Robert Penn WarrenBut for the present I would lie there and know I didn't have to get up, and feel the holy emptiness and blessed fatigue of a saint after the dark night of the soul. For God and Nothing have a lot in common. You look either one of Them straight in the eye for a second and the immediate effect on the human constitution is the same.
Robert Penn Warren