Quotes from Robert Penn Warren

But wanting don't make a thing true. You don't have to live forever to figure that out.

To wake in some dawn and see / As though down a rifle barrel, lined up / Like sights, the self that was, the self that is, and there / Far off but in range, completing that alignment, your fate.

But he was saying, '--and so I'm not going to make any speech--' In his old voice, his own voice. Or was that his voice? Which was his true voice, which one of all the voices, you would wonder.

You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting.

I have known time and distance, but not why I am here.

Mortimer had killed Judge Irwin because Judge Irwin had killed him, and I had killed Judge Irwin because Judge Irwin created me, and looking at matters in that light one could say that Mortimer and I were merely the twin instruments of Judge Irwin's protracted and ineluctable destruction. For either killing or creating may be a crime punishable by death, and the death always comes by the criminal's own hand and every man is a suicide. If a man knew how to live he would never die.

But I knew how the play would come out. This was like a dress rehearsal after the show has closed down.

I thought God cannot be Fullness of Being. For Life is Motion.----- For Life is Motion toward Knowledge. If God is Complete Knowledge then He is Complete Non-Motion, which is Non-Life, which is Death. Therefore, if there is such a God of Fullness of Being, we would worship Death, the Father.

He's interested in Willie. Quite simply and directly. And when anybody is interested in himself quite simply and directly the way Willie is interested in Willie you call it genius. It's only the half-baked people like Mr. Patton who are interested in money. Even the big boys who make a real lot of money aren't interested in money. Henry Ford isn't interested in money. He is interested in Henry Ford and therefore he is a genius.

I had found the truth, I had dug the truth up out of the ash pile, the garbage heap, the kitchen midden, the bone yard, and had sent that little piece of truth to Adam Stanton. I couldn't cut the truth to match his ideas. Well, he'd have to make his ideas match the truth. That is what all of us historical researchers believe. The truth shall make you free.

Well, you were the Boss's poodle. And you liked it. You liked to be spit on. You weren't human. You weren't real. That's what I thought. But I was wrong, Tiny. Somewhere down in you there was something made you human. You resented being spit on. Even for money.

You just make it up as you go along.

But why should I lie here longer? I am not dead yet … And the world's way is yet long to go, And I love the world even in my anger, And love is a hard thing to outgrow. —Robert Penn Warren, from "American Portrait: Old Style," Now and Then: Poems, 1976-1978<.i> (Random House, 1978)

There is nothing like a good book to put you to sleep with the illusion that life is rich and meaningful.

That is what all of us historical researchers believe. And we love truth.

There ain't anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity.

The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist anymore, speaks a name…which belongs to that non-existent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger.

But listen here, there ain't anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity.

Only I thought that the Rip Van Winkle story was all wrong. You went to sleep for a long time, and when you woke up nothing whatsoever had changed. No matter how long you slept, it was the same.

El hombre es concebido en pecado y nace en medio de la corrupción, y pasa del pestazo de los pañales al hedor del sudario. Siempre hay algo.

I had not understood then what I think I have now come to understand: that we can keep the past only by having the future, for they are forever tied together. Therefore

So I tried to make what amends I could for being what I was...

And when anybody is interested in himself quite simply and directly the way Willie is interested in Willie you call it genius. It's

For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge to blackness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.