“The treasure which you think not worth taking trouble and pains to find, this alone is the real treasure you are longing for all your life. The glittering treasure you are hunting for day and night lies buried on the other side of that hill yonder.”

No use to preach to the working-man courtesy & politeness when at the same time the working-man is not given working conditions under which he can stay polite and soft-mannered.

Morals are taught & preached not for the sake of heaven, but to assist those people on earth who have everything they need & more to retain their possessions & to help them to accumulate still more. Morals is the butter for those who have no bread.

The deplorable thing is that the people who were tortured yesterday, torture today.

The prison was very important – as everywhere on earth. Everywhere the building of a prison is the first step in the organization of a civilized state.

If you do not wish to be lied to, do not ask questions! The only real defence civilized man has against anybody who bothers him is to lie. There would be no lies if there were no questions.

The creative person should have no other biography than his works.

A trip to a Central American jungle to watch how Indians behave near a bridge won’t make you see either the jungle or the bridge or the Indians if you believe that the civilization you were born into is the only one that counts. Go and look around with the idea that everything you learned in school and college is wrong.

But anything that you hear about Japan is nothing like what you see when you actually go over there and see it, you know, in a real situation.

I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You’re out in the open field. You’re actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it’s easy to criticize something you can understand.

That’s what I always enjoyed about acting, the real adrenalin rush. My heart – still before I go on stage – crashing out of my chest. That’s thrilling to me.

But, Christ, there’s a difference between exotic and foreign, isn’t there? Exotic means you know how to use your foreignness, or you make yourself a little foreign in order to appear exotic. Real foreign is a little scary, believe me.

Well we’re waiting here in Allentown For the Pennsylvania we never found For the promises our teachers gave If we worked hard If we behaved So the graduations hang on the wall But they never really helped us at all No they never taught us what was real.

The real deal is always going to win in the end.

In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of ‘reason’ as single sources of authority.

The United States has put more money on HIV, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis than any country in the world and it’s having an impact real quick.