The dignity of man is vindicated as much by the thinker and poet as by the statesman and soldier.
Read Blake or go to hell, that's my message to the modern world.
Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat-show, but the range of articulate human imagination as it extends from the height of imaginative heaven to the depth of imaginative hell.
The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.
The fact that creative powers come from an area of the mind that seems to be independent of the conscious will, and often emerge with a good deal of emotional disturbance in their wake, provides the chief analogy between prophecy and the arts. . . Some people pursue wholeness and integration, others get smashed up, and fragments are rescued from the smash of an intensity that the wholeness and integration people do not reach.
Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, recognizes that it is man's destiny to unite and not divide, and understands that creating proletariats and scapegoats and second-class citizens is a mean and contemptible activity.
This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.
I have a responsibility to pass on to the next generation what I learned from my teachers,. . . It keeps me young and reminds me where I came from. Teaching young artists is like giving water to a flower.
Either one is factually equal, and consequently morally equal as well; on the other hand, if one is morally equal, there is no reason why one should contest factual equality of rights or simply refuse to grant them.
We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is - on the brink of catastrophe - torn by polarizing hate, and how it's a shame that we can't work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!
The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done.