"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."

"Don't try to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

"The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."

"The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews."

"Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."

"Fraud is the ready minister of injustice."

"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless."

"When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun."

"In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes American what it is."

"The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can."

"Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick and shovel."