I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
— Carl Sandburg
One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.
All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.
I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.
Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.
A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.
Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.
I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence.
