His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.

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Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

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Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.

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A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.

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When all else fails, philosophize.

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I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.

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Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. It sees what is best in the beloved even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light.

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I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground... And so are you. So are we all.

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We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.

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Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?

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