His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.

Opportunity is another word for moving on. And it is a word choice, which is often the wiser. If the well gets poisoned, move to a meadow of merriment, where your hearts will echo the more.

I know a lot of Eastern Europeans, and because of what they have been through and what they have seen, they have an attitude where they are not easily fooled.

I may not be the world's best glad-handing politician, but I've been elected mayor twice. I understand politics. And I definitely understand where the state line is.

From the throes of inspiration and the eddies of thought the poet may at last be able to arrive at, and convey the right admixture of words and meaning.

It is our task in our time and in our generation, to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.

I am the one person who can truthfully say, I got my job through the New York Times.

I find human behavior really interesting. I think that's ultimately what being an actor is. You explore what it means to be human.

I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. “None of this is worth it!” That’s what I’d like people to hear.

America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to a select few.