...I was one of the haves, and one of the secrets of being a have is not wasting your time on empathy. - Peter S. Beagle

I'll tell you something. Once I was very fond of a poem by Emily Dickinson or somebody. I only remember one line of it, but it goes, 'The soul selects her own society.' I used to tell it to everybody. Once I quoted it to a friend of mine, and he said, 'Maybe, but the body gets thrown into bed with the goddamnedest people.

Claudio Bianchi did write poetry [...] He had no vanity about this, no fantasies of literary celebrity; he simply took pleasure putting words in order, exactly as he laid out seedlings in the spring, and tasting them afterward, as he tasted fresh new scallions or ripe tomatoes, or smelled mint or garlic on his hands.

she is a story with no ending, happy or sad. She can never belong to anything mortal enough to want her.” Most