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

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.

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.

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.

The only thing which can tell us about the novel is the novel.

Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.

I inherited that calm from my father, who was a farmer. You sow, you wait for good or bad weather, you harvest, but working is something you always need to do.

Sensible men show their sense by saying much in few words. If noble actions are the substance of life, good sayings are its ornament and guide.

Acting, it's not my life, my children and my family, that's life. I'll get up every morning, God willing, for that.

And he had a nice home in Ohio with wife, daughter, Christmas tree, two cars, garage, lawn, lawnmower, but he couldn't enjoy any of it because he really wasn't free. It was sadly true.

A lot of people on Capitol Hill don't want to talk to me.

I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does.

We fail to see that we can control our destiny; make ourselves do whatever is possible; make ourselves become whatever we long to be.

Everybody I know is a joke writer.