I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.
Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember. Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes what to do with the pieces?
If you're angry, you don't have to write a poem dealing with the cause of your anger. But it needs to be an angry poem. So go ahead. . . write one. I know you're at least a little bit angry with me. And when you're done with your poem, decipher it as if you'd just found it printed in a textbook and know absolutely nothing about its author. The results can be amazing. . . and scary. But it's always cheaper than a therapist.
Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
You never toot your own horn.