You can't become a saint by taking dope, stealing your friends' typewriters, giving girls chancres, not supporting your wife and children, and then reading St. John of the Cross. All of that, when it's happened before, has typified the collapse of civilization ... and today the social fabric is falling apart so fast, it makes your head swim.

You don't become a saint until you lead a good life whether in Tibet or Italy or America.

There have always been those who, though they see tragedy as the outcome of freedom, will nevertheless judge that tragedy is not too high a price to pay.

The basic line in any good verse is cadenced... building it around the natural breath structures of speech.