Maybe America didn’t need art and inner miracles. It had so many outer ones. The USA was a big operation, very big. The more it, the less we.
And the process started over again. Once more it was, Who are you? And I had to confess that I didn’t know where to begin.
And I dreamed down at the clouds, and thought that when I was a kid I had dreamed up at them, and having dreamed at the clouds from both sides as no other generation of men has done, one should be able to accept his death very easily.
Nobody should be a mystery intentionally. Unintentionally is mysterious enough.
But privately when things got very bad I often looked into books to see whether I could find some helpful words, and one day I read, “The forgiveness of sins is perpetual and righteousness first is not required.
The sense in which Goethe was right: Continued life means expectation, Death is the abolition of choice. The more choice is limited, the closer we are to death. The greatest cruelty is to curtail expectations without taking away life completely. A life term in prison is like that. So is citizenship in some countries. The best solution would be to live as if the ordinary expectations had not been removed, not from day to day, blindly. But that requires immense self-mastery.
The same things are done by us, over and over, with terrible predictability. One may be forgiven, in view of this, for wishing at least to associate with beauty.
My God! Who is this creature? It considers itself human.
I am not an ornithologist – I am a bird.
There’s the most extraordinary, unheard of poetry buried in America, but none of the conventional means known to culture can even begin to extract it... the agony is too deep, the disorder too big for art enterprises undertaken in the old way.
The paltriness of these sexual struggles.
If life is not intoxicating, it’s nothing. Here it’s burn or rot.
Greatness without models? Inconceivable. One could not be the thing itself – Reality. One must be satisfied with symbols. Make it the object of imitation to reach and release the high qualities. Make peace therefore with intermediacy and representations. Otherwise the individual must be the failure he now sees and knows himself to be.
Sometimes I wonder,” I said, “if people who are going to tell the truth shouldn’t make sure first that they can defend themselves.
I am sure you were sincere. Not insincere. True insincerity is hard to find.
More commonly suffering breaks people, crushes them, and is simply unilluminating. You see how gruesomely human beings are destroyed by pain, when they have the added torment of losing their humanity first, so that their death is a total defeat...
Some people embrace their gifts with gratitude. Others have no use for them and can think only of overcoming their weaknesses. Only their defects interest and challenge them. Thus those who hate people may seek them out. Misanthropes often practice psychiatry. The shy become performers. Natural thieves look for positions of trust. The frightened make bold moves.
Again! It was like the question asked by Tennyson about the flower in the crannied wall. That is, to answer it might involve the history of the universe.
What use was war without also love?
Well, what o you want?” I said. “I am the type of guy who couldn’t survive without disfigurement. Life has worked me over. It wasn’t just the war, either... I got a bad wound, you know. But the shots of life... ” I gave myself a bang on the breast. “Right here! You know what I mean, King?