... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off th...e conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us--extraordinary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his inno...cence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are lone figures armed only with ideas, sometimes with just one idea, who blast away whole epochs in which we are enwrapped ...like mummies. Some are powerful enough to resurrect the dead. Some steal on us unawares and put a spell over us which it takes centuries to throw off. Some put a curse on us, for our stupidity and inertia, and then it seems as if God himself were unable to lift it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame t...han to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I shook off the sweat and the sun. I understood that I had destroyed the balance of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach wh...ere I had been happy. Then I shot four more times at an inert body which the bullets penetrated without appearing so. And it was like four brief knocks that I struck on the door of misfortune.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Suddenly, through birthing a daughter, a woman finds herself face to face not only with an infant, a little girl, a woman-to- be, ...but also with her own unresolved conflicts from the past and her hopes and dreams for the future.... As though experiencing an earthquake, mothers of daughters may find their lives shifted, their deep feelings unearthed, the balance struck in all relationships once again off kilter.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 »