Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.

I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter.

My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall.

Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life.

Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven't told the girl you are smitten with her.

The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help.

We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.

I have often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building.

Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.

I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.

A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.

I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.

I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.

I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out.

A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.

I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.

I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.

There have been as many varieties of socialists as there are wild birds that fly in the woods and sometimes go up and on through the clouds.