There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
Category Archive: 1925
A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
In the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That… was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about ‘white men.’
America in its entirety is segregationist and is racist. It’s more camouflaged in the north, but it’s the same thing.
Relationships, like cars, should undergo regular services to make sure they are still roadworthy.
Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.
Unification is not our present goal. That is a future program.
I’ve reached a point in life where it would be easy to let down my guard and write simple imagistic poems. But I don’t want to write poems that aren’t necessary. I want to write poems that matter, that have an interesting point of view.
I didn’t learn much about writing at Sarah Lawrence, but I learned a lot about the sources of poems – dreams, myth, history – from the really great teachers, Joseph Campbell, Charles Trinkhaus, Bert Loewenberg, and a young Australian anthropologist named Harry Hawthorne.
Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.