Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.

History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.

When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course.

I think continually of those who were truly great.

There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife - a tyrannical midwife.

All that you can imagine you already know.

So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself

All the posters on the walls All the leaflets in the streets Are mutilated, destroyed or run in rain, Their words blotted out with tears, Skins peeling from their bodies In the victorious hurricane.

There is a certain justice in criticism.

There are many who think a wise prince ought, when he has the chance, to foment astutely some enmity, so that by suppressing it he will augment his greatness.

It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.

Blame it on the lies that killed us. Blame it on the truth that ran us down.

The Bush Administration and the Congress have to stop ignoring this crisis in international trade. The longer we ignore it, the more American jobs will move overseas. It's just that simple.

You have a history of art-music that you equate with music. That's what I love about that term art-music. It separates itself from music-music, the music people have always made.

His dagger was out, poised at her throat. “Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life.

I've had a very full career in the theater, on stage, in films and on television.

I'm most comfortable on stage.

One must read all writers twice--the good as well as the bad. The one kind will be recognized; the other, unmasked.

On my gravestone, I want it to say, "I told you I was sick."