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I'm as much influenced by Joseph Smith and the Mormons as I am, more so, than by Eliot. Actually, I'm much more influenced by the poetry of the Mormons.
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Life has no beginning, middle or end.
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A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.
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Dreiser... I love... and almost wouldn't speak to anyone who ever attacked him.
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I would say my theme has always been paradise lost, always the lost cause, the lost leader, the lost utopia.
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I believe that all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopias, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered.
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If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized.
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The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.
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Every heart is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion.
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Twice in his life Eugene Victor Debs took the long leap to the Ultima Thule of prison, passing beyond the realm of the acceptable into the nonacceptable, from respectability into the criminal community of the monster who was an enemy to the people.