“The end of art is peace.”

“It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.”

“We want what the woman wanted in the prison queue in Leningrad, standing there with cold and whispering for fear, enduring the terror of Stalin's regime and asking the poet Anna Akhmatova if she could describe it all, if her art was equal to it.”

“It is always betterto avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.For every one of us, living in this worldmeans waiting for our end. Let whoever canwin glory before death. When a warrior is gone,that will be his best and only bulwark.”

“Now it’s high watermark and floodtide in the heartand time to go.The sea-nymphs in the spraywill be the chorus now.What’s left to say?Suspect too much sweet-talkbut never close your mind.It was a fortunate windthat blew me here. I leavehalf-ready to believe that a crippled trust might walkand the half-true rhyme is love.”

“Human beings suffer,They torture one another,They get hurt and get hard.No poem or play or songCan fully right a wrongInflicted and endured.The innocent in gaolsBeat on their bars together.A hunger-striker's fatherStands in the graveyard dumb.The police widow in veilsFaints at the funeral home.History says, don't hopeOn this side of the grave.But then, once in a lifetimeThe longed-for tidal waveOf justice can rise up,And hope and history rhyme.So hope for a great sea-changeOn the far side of revenge.Believe that further shoreIs reachable from here.Believe in miracleAnd cures and healing wells.Call miracle self-healing:The utter, self-revealingDouble-take of feeling.If there's fire on the mountainOr lightning and stormAnd a god speaks from the skyThat means someone is hearingThe outcry and the birth-cryOf new life at its term.”

“Walk on air against your better judgement.”