"Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits.”

“Men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”

“No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.”

“I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.”

“In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.”

“Everything of mine is permeated with my love of ideas-both big and small. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it grabs me and holds me, facinates me. And then I'll run out and something about it... I write for fun.”

“Poetry makes its own pertinence, and a single stanza outweighs a book of prose.”

“The art of writing, like the art of love, runs all the way from a kind of routine hard to distinguish from piling bricks to a kind of frenzy closely related to delirium tremens.”

“He only moves toward the perfection of his art whose criticism surpasses his achievement.”