| Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. Terrorism: deadly violence agains humans and other living things, usually conducted by government A leader leads from the front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear. There has got to be a God; the world could not have become so fucked up by chance alone. The tragic sense of life: our heroic acceptance of the suffering of others. The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. Beauty is only skin deep, ugliness goes all the way through. Life imitates art - but badly For this world that men have made, none of us is bad enough. For the world that made us, none is good enough One brave deed is worht a thousand books. Life without music would be an intolerable insult. The greater your dreams, the more terrible your nightmares. Life is too tragic for sadness. Let us rejoice. Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders. Life is unfair, and it's not fair that life is unfair. If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the winds of a vulture - that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves. Some lives are tragic, some ridiculous. Most are both at once. Nobody has so many friends that he cannot afford to lose one. "Welcome to the banquet of life" said a recent Pope, forgetting that most have fought their way to the table. The world is wide and beautiful. But almost everywhere, everywhere, the children are dying. To the intelligent person, life appears as infinitely mysterious, but the stupid have answers for every question. I intend to be good for the rest of my natural life, if I live that long There is a kind of poetry in simple fact The best thing about graduating from the university is that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book Poetry - even bad poetry - might be our final hope Great art is never perfect, perfect art is never great "Be fair" say the temporizers, "tell both sides of the story." But how can you be fair to both sides of a rape? Of a murder? Of a massacre? Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrel, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should've been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to a premature burial. Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are - retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on. Whenever I see a photograph of a sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one. Music begins where the words leave off. Simplicity is always a virtue. One kid on a riverbank working out a Stephen Foster tune on his new harmonica projects more magic and power than the entire Vienne Philharmonic and Chorus laboring (once again) through the MOzart Requiem. The feminists have a legitimate grievance, but so does everyone else. Women who do not wish to be mothers should not have babies. I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving. What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote. If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save the wilderness. God bless America, let's save some of it. |