When I look back at my past and the way I grew up, I grew up on communes. That was meant to be.
A problem is often half-solved when it is clearly stated.
There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow.
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
By going over your day in imagination before you begin it, you can begin acting successfully at any moment.
Act boldly and unforeseen forces will come to your aid.
All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right-about-face which turns us from failure towards success.
It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian. ' The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non-Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming first but many balances.
I think history is continuous. It doesn't begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 911. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.
I like food too much to go on some crazy diet. French fries are my favorite downfall.
I've always believed that poetry must speak of realities as least as complicated as those spoken of in prose. I've read books of poems, even single poems, which are, for me, at least the equivalent of a short story or a novel. Martin Amis, in an interview with Saul Bellow in the early eighties, quotes Bellow asking, "Why not address 'the mysterious circumstance of being', say what it's like to be alive at this time, on this planet?" This has been and still is my ambition.