Schoolteachers seemed determined to persuade me that 'classic' is a synonym for 'narcotic'.

We honor ambition, we reward greed, we celebrate materialism, we worship acquisitiveness, we commercialize art, we cherish success and then we bark at the young about the gentle arts of the spirit. The kids know that if we really valued learning, we would pay our teachers what we pay our lawyers and stockbrokers. If we valued art, we would not measure it by its capacity to produce profits. If we regarded literature as important, we would remove it from the celebrity sweepstakes and spend a little money on our libraries.

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins.

A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man's pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul.

When sudden death takes a president, opportunities for new beginnings flourish among the ambitious and the tensions among such people can be dramatic, as they were when President Kennedy was killed.