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Quotes by Poet

"I was fourteen when Kissinger made his secret trip to China, and then there was subsequently Nixon's trip to China, and I was very much seized with an interest in China."

"Funny thing how when you reach out, people tend to reach right back. Best, then, to make sure your hand is open and not fisted."

"And each man stands with his face in the light. Of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can."

"What is a kiss? Why this, as some approve: The sure, sweet cement, glue, and lime of love."

"Another person's thoughts about you are outside of your jurisdiction, you have no authority."

"Anybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself."

"Start thinking of your guilt as being selfish, because guilt blocks opportunities from arriving for those you care about and for you."


"The other guy I dug a lot was Burroughs because he was a smart man already; he learned it through the druggie pool - the street scene of an old aristocratic kind of man."

"I don't think I am any good. If I thought I was any good, I wouldn't be."

"To be great is to be misunderstood."

"Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst."

"The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity sluggish and indomitable as a glacier will mitigate the most violent and depress the most exalted revolution."

"Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death."

"If only I could see myself from the same vantage point that I observe the world; I might judge my behavior and expressions more critically, and others less."


"I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does."

"I wish everyone had someone who never popped their balloons."

"You never step backwards when you're sure of where you're going."

"A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations."

"The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."

"The epic poet collaborates with the spirit of his time in the composition of his work. That is, if he is successful; the time may refuse to work with him, but he may not refuse to work with his time."

"So it is in poetry. All we ask is that the mood recorded shall impress us as having been of the kind that exhausts the imaginative capacity; if it fails to do this the failure will announce itself either in prose or in insignificant verse."

"Yet higher religion, which is only a search for a larger life, is essentially experience and recognized the necessity of experience as its foundation long before science learnt to do so."
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