Robert Penn Warren

Perhaps he had to be close in order to keep a reason for the things he did. To make the things he did be themselves Life. And not merely a delightful excercise of technical skill which man had been able to achieve because he, of all animals, had a fine thumb. Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life."

What if angry vectors veer Round your sleeping head, and form. There's never need to fear Violence of the poor world's abstract storm.

Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?"

The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him.