I think it was lucky that during most of the work on the Odyssey I lived on Homer's sea in houses that were, in one case, shaken by the impact of the Mediterranean winter storms on the rocks below.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Is encouragement what the poet needs? Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact, quite a few of them need more discouragement, the most discouragement possible.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.

Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.

In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

I think that everyone who took part has always been grateful for it.

Of course the other and more serious way in which it all happens is that one finds in poems and language some quality one appropriates for oneself and wishes to reproduce.

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not?

Success is a choice, not an option.

Faith is the womb in which all worthwhile and spectacular things have ever been born.

Love is worth everything. Everything.

The self is merely the lens through which we see others and the world.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work. I am the grass. I cover all.

An essential part of seeing clearly is finding the willingness to look closely and to go beyond our own ideas.

Race, and the discussion of it brings out the bad, the good and the crazy in us.

Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself.

Just like moons and suns, With certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.

In a situation of potential conflict, let compassion guide you.