I Think Joy Is Just As Instructive

Love Must Be Learned Again And Again... Hate Needs No Instruction, But Waits Only To Be Provoked.

Grant That The Idea Of God Is The Most Splendid Single Act Of The Creative Human Imagination, And That All His Multiple Faces And Attributes Correspond To Some Need And Satisfy Some Deep Desire In Mankind; Still, For The Inquirers, It Is Impossible Not To Conclude That This Mystical Concept Has Been Harnessed Rudely To Machinery Of The Most Mundane Sort, And Has Been Made To Serve The Ends Of An Organization Which, Ruling Under Divine Guidance, Has Ruled Very Little Better, And In Some Respects, Worse, Than Certain Rather Mediocre But Frankly Manmade Systems Of Government.

[on Gertrude Stein's Making Of Americans:] I Doubt If All The People Who Should Read It Will Read It For A Great While Yet, For It Is In Such A Limited Edition, And Reading It Is Anyhow A Sort Of Permanent Occupation.

I Think I've Only Spent About Ten Percent Of My Energies On Writing. The Other Ninety Percent Went To Keeping My Head Above Water.

No Man Can Be Explained By His Personal History, Least Of All A Poet.