31 quotes
The modern sensibility attempts to drain the contents of experience; these Greek poets strive to state the fact so poignantly that it becomes an ever-flowing spring — as Sappho says, "More real than real, more gold than gold."
Classics Revisited (1968)
Ex-cons always say, "You never know what makes the wheels go round until you’ve done time in the joint." This is even more true of psychiatric hospitals. It is a perfect mass hypostatization of society, the organization of the Social Lie.
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)
You don't become a saint until you lead a good life whether in Tibet or Italy or America.
Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)
Marriage is the last sacrament available to modern man, and with the terrible destruction of interpersonal relations by capitalism and its war-making State, it is not very available, nor is it surely enduring. But then, vision does not come with guarantees.
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)
In the star-filled dark we cook
Our macaroni and eat
By lantern light. Stars cluster
Around our table like fireflies.
In Defense of the Earth (1956)
I was giving a reading at some university. Down in the front row of the auditorium was a young lady in a leather microskirt and a leather microbolero, tied with a leather bootlace, and nothing else whatever. I said, "I have an extremely wide repertory. What would you like — sex, revolution, or mysticism?" She looked up and said quietly, "What’s the difference?"
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)
With my own group I like to keep it loose. They have to counter rather than go with me. When they stop I like to be moving.
Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)
The moral issues with which Marcus struggles would be, as he points out, unchanged whether the universe were mechanical and devoid of meaning or value or ruled by deity or Providence; whether the will were in fact free or determined; whether there were or were not a future life, or any even fugitive rewards and punishments at all.
Classics Revisited (1968)
In America we have nothing that takes the place of the gods and goddesses and heroes and demigods of the ancient world. There is nothing to connect us with the soil. We have no mythology. It has never been possible to construct one.
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)
The basic line in any good verse is cadenced... building it around the natural breath structures of speech.
Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)
See Life steadily, see it whole.
Misattributed