Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.
It is the business of little minds to shrink.
Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.
There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men. There is only one woman in the world and her name is All Women. There is only one child in the world and the child's name is All Children.
The impact of television on our culture is. . . indescribable. There's a certain sense in which it is nearly as important as the invention of printing.
Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers.
Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.
I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn child.
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Come on, you Do you want to live forever?
Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.
When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.
I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.
And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release — out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know?
There is an eagle in me that wants to soar.
Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man? They are in tune and step with constellations of universal law.
All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker.
Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night.
One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.
History is a living horse laughing at a wooden horse. History is a wind blowing where it listeth. History is no sure thing to bet on. History is a box of tricks with a lost key. History is a labyrinth of doors with sliding panels, a book of ciphers with the code in a cave of the Saragossa sea. History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it.
There is a formal poetry perfect only in form?the number of syllables, the designated and required stresses of accent, the rhymes if wantedthey come off with the skill of a solved crossword puzzle.
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