Contradictions

“When you organize one of the contradictory elements out of your work of art, you are getting rid not just of it, but of the contradiction of which it was a part; and it is the contradictions in works of art which make them able to represent us—as logical and methodical generalizations cannot—our world and our selves, which are also full of contradictions.”

— Randall Jarrell, "Some Lines from Whitman" from Poetry and the Age