An apt aphorism half kills, half immortalizes.
I am not dead yet! I can still call forth a piece of soul and set it down in color, fixed forever.
You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read.
But hands are sacred things. Touch is personal, fingers of love, feelers of blind eyes, tongues of those who cannot talk.
A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.
I am not a person to say the words out loud I think them strongly, or let them hunger from the page: know it from there, from my silence, from somewhere other than my tongue the quiet love the silent rage.
I have watched the river and the sea for a lifetime. I have seen rivers rob soil from the roots of trees until the giants came foundering down. I have watched shores slip and perish, the channels silt and change; what was beach become a swamp and a headland tumble into the sea. An island has eroded in silent pain since my boyhood, and reefs have become islands. Yet the old people used to say, People pass away, but not the land. It remains forever. Maybe that is so. The land changes. The land continues. The sea changes. The sea remains.
If you're making it up, make it up good. And then believe in what you made up.
For black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals to support the racist practices of the University of Michigan amounts to no less than a gross betrayal of the civil rights principles of our historic struggle from slavery to the final guarantee of constitutional rights to all Americans. Indeed, it was practices like those of the University of Michigan, but against blacks, that were the focal point of much of the civil rights movement.
Servant of God, well done! well hast thou fought The better fight, who single hast maintain'd Against revolted multitudes the cause of truth.
But ah, to fish with a worm, and then not catch your fish! To fail with a fly is no disgrace: your art may have been impeccable, your patience faultless to the end. But the philosophy of worm-fishing is that of results, of having something tangible in your basket when the day's work is done.