"I've been around enough to realise that there are two things that once people have them, they don't want to give up, and it's extremely difficult to convince them to give up: one is privileges, and the other is subsidies."

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If you were making poetry out of convictions - trying to convince other people - you were in the territory of rhetoric, and that wasn't the territory of poetry. I think that's pretty smart. I think that it doesn't need to be altogether true, but that was my starting place.

— Robert Hass