I taught myself to name my name, To bark back, loosen love and crying; To ease my woman so she came, To ease an old man who was dying.

And you, whiner, who wastes your time Dawdling over the remorseless earth, What evil, what unspeakable crime Have you made your life worth?

in darkness and in hedges I sang my sour tone and all my love was howling conspicuously alone.

And I realized that maybe none of us ever gets to choose our lives. Our only choice is to live the life that comes to us, or go down into darkness.

I've been accused of humanizing the Nazis, to which I can only say, you can't blame me for that. God did that. Go talk to him. It's a strange thing for an atheist to say.

The sleek, expensive girls I teach, Younger and pinker every year, Bloom gradually out of reach.

The sweet reward for preparation often does not come in the youthful twenties or staid thirties. It arrives - with accrued interest - in the mature years.

Southerners have been known to stay over the Fourth and not get home before Thanksgiving. Some oldtimers take in overnight guests and keep them through three generations.

You must call up every strength you own And you can rip off the whole facial mask.

I have not learned how often I Can win, can love, but choose to die.

Hope is possible, when you decide to believe that what you are hoping for is possible.

Is it useful to feel fear, because it prepares you for nasty events, or is it useless, because nasty events will occur whether you are frightened or not?

That, after all, was his job. The title of emperor carried with it only a single duty.To make everything better.

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.

My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line.

One aspect of politics too little acknowledged is that besides being jolly serious and all that, it is also a hugely enjoyable game for boys.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can't move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

Improvisation is a compositional method.

The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible. The hard part is figuring out when to be which.

Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.

Being dead is being weak and walled off.