Adults have their defense against time; it is called "responsibility," and once one assumes it he can transform his life into a se...t of routines which will account for all those hours when he is stale or tired. It is not size or age or childishness that separates children from adults. It is "responsibility." Adults come in all sizes, ages, and differing varieties of childishness, but as long as they have "responsibility" we recognize, often by the light gone out of their eyes, that they are what we call grownup. When grownups cope with "responsibility" for enough number of years they are retired from it. They are given, in exchange, a "leisure problem." They sit around with their "leisure problem" and try to figure out what to do with it. Sometimes they go crazy. Sometimes they get other jobs. Sometimes it gets too much for them and they die. They have been handed an undetermined future of nonresponsible time and they don't know what to do about it. And that is precisely the way it is with children. Time is the everpresent factor in their lives. It passes slowly or fast, always against their best interests: good time is over in a minute; bad time takes forever. Short on "responsibility," they are confronted with a "leisure problem."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are ...lit only from one side unused and empty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.... He who works for sweetness and light united, works to m...ake reason and the will of God prevail.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Now bury your bird," the wind it bawled, "And bury him down and down... Who had to put his trust in one So light-eyed and so brown...."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I will keep America moving forward, always forward--for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand points of l...ight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The bad lover, like the bad poet, perhaps because of a preoccupation with self, is essentially inattentive, doesn't listen, doesn'...t anticipate. Or, just as bad, proceeds by rote, first this thing and then the next, and therefore leaves no opportunity for discovery, or departure. Form to me implies an alertness to the demands of your material and an orchestration of effects. It is some happy combination of the poet's intent and the poem's esprit and the necessary compromises between the two. We can't be too willful, but we must have things in mind. We don't want to be the wimps of our own poems, but we'd be happy to be led into some lovely places. And we'd like to have some control after we lose control, at least enough to throw light on what has just hap pened, perhaps even to articulate what it has meant to us. And of course there are moments when we'd be better off being appreciatively silent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »