Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction.
Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.
We don't want to live in the dark moods of imponderable mystery, but neither do we want to miss them altogether. they allow us to emerge from the tender sadness of the manger to sing with the angels in the skies above.
What language shall I borrow To thank Thee, dearest Friend, For this, Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end? O make me Thine forever, And should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never Outlive my love for Thee.
One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice.
I have taught students from the New York City area so long I have a special affinity and rapport with them. It surprises me sometimes that there are students from anywhere else.
I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.
The Indians are a marginal people in Guatemala just like I am a marginal person in the first world.
Monkeys who very sensibly refrain from speech, lest they should be set to earn their livings.
They say there are something like 12 million illegal immigrants in the country right now, with another half a million coming every year. Remember in the last election when the Democrats claimed there was two Americas? Turns out one of them was Mexico.
Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right.