optimism
Who knows what the day after tomorrow will bring—the very thing we most wanted and haven’t allowed our hearts to hope.
Letter to Eudora Welty, January 24, 1967, in What There Is to Say We Have Said, ed. by Suzanne Marrs (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2011), 213.
At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive—‘I’m glad I’m not dead!’ sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, ‘Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?’ to which Beckett answered, ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that.’)
“The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.)” New York Times, July 6, 2013.
I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
“Any Time,” in Allegiances (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers,1970), 67.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.
University of Portland commencement speech, May 3, 2009.
Abstractly cheering thought: the millions of people around the world who will tonight sleep together for the first time.
Twitter, 2:22 PM Jan 27, 2010.