I have seen so many lands vanish in my wake, torn down like stage sets. What survives of them? An image as fleeting as a dream: whatever beauties I discovered, I already knew by heart.

Childhood memories surge back more vividly midway through life – like some palimpsest whose original text suddenly reappears after the manuscript has been chemically treated.

I am the other.

Don’t wait up for me tonight, for the night will be black and white.

The last madness I’ll probably persist in is to believe myself a poet: it will be up to the critics to cure me.

There is no greater fulfillment than living with a positive mind and a heart full of unconditional self-love.

Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and beheld a flying roll.

We must ensure our system of higher education offers world-class quality for a world-class economy.

As a very young poet, I had been brought up on that dogma that politics was bad for poetry.

The fact that we have to discuss reality as though there were no reality is an indication of the confusion of our times.

I got a house full of Rembrandts and priceless art, and all the little girls they wanna tear me apart.

The better we know each other, the more we love each other.

. . . we will never be prompted by the Holy Ghost to do something we cannot do. It may require extraordinary effort and much time, patience, prayer, and obedience, but we can do it.

I’m very conscious of the fact that you can’t do it alone. It’s teamwork. When you do it alone you run the risk that when you are no longer there nobody else will do it.

A man can die but once.