Born on April 25 — Quotes

If you can't win, make sure you don't lose.

when we think about Mexican people, when we think about Latin American people. We don’t imagine them having full and interesting lives in the same way that we imagine white people having full and interesting lives. But they did...there’s all these nuances that get lost sometimes when you read these stories about us. And in every story that I write, I want to bring a little bit of that.

Wilson towards the end zone. It is Kearse! Seattle's going to the Super Bowl! Jermaine Kearse!

In the name of toleration, the believer is asked to associate on a common level of total acceptance with the atheist, the pervert, the criminal, and the adherents of other religions as though no differences existed.

(Sylvia at typewriter) On Getting Old in America. By Sylvia. Page One. 1. Best to do it somewhere else.

Consistent with Martin Luther King's vision, the government should stop color-coding its citizens.

(Sylvia) There’s not enough coffee in the whole world to turn me into a functional human being.

There is no ideal system just as there are no ideal persons, ideal families or ideal cities, we have to get away from ideals.

Can the ear hear a thirteen-syllable line as consisting of thirteen syllables? I don't think so, but I think that a series of thirteen-syllable lines (supposing that was the length chosen) would, after a while, begin to have a characteristic resemblance. For the most part, though, counting the syllables seems to be something that works, if it works, for the poet. It is a private method of organization.

(Sylvia) A mature person doesn’t scream at her waiter: “Don’t tell me your name and don’t put anything freshly ground on my salad!” (p. 69)

There exists an insanity that touches on a higher level, by knowledge or instinct. That insanity of life I try to put in my painting. It has nothing to do with any morals or laws. It is there and it is insane.

A [further] aspect [of homosexuality] is the hatred of God’s reality, an insistence on wars against reality, in living in a world of make believe. As a result, the theater is the natural element of these people. Some scholars, again not Christian, have pointed out there has been by-and-large a strong homosexual control of the theater, in varying degrees in different times, from the days of the Romans. But part and parcel of this homosexual control of the theater has been the delight in prostituting women, in using them and abusing them for the sheer delight of showing their contempt for them. Now this is homosexual culture, described by people who are not hostile to it, and in fact sometimes have some good things to say for it.

It hurts me that Holland chose an ugly path to aim for the title.

England will make no unprovoked attack upon Germany and pursue no aggressive policy towards her. Aggression upon Germany is not the subject, and forms no part, of any Treaty understanding or combination to which England is now a party, nor will she become a party to anything that has such an object.

"As the crow flies"—a popular and picturesque expression to denote a straight line.