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

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

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.

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.

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?

Your mind is the key to opening the door of opportunity.

We may always enslave ourselves to mankind if we do not clearly differentiate between showing respect to mankind from pleasing mankind

Today, with tears in my eyes, I telephoned the mother of one of our children (aged thirteen) who had spoken for the first time since the age of three...

People are concerned, here again, about life, and haven't given a whole lot of attention to how you make fathers responsible for the lives they bring into the world.

Everyone wants answers and wants to know what the timeline is. Unfortunately, it's a complex situation, and we don't have the final answers yet.

We all make mistakes. It's human. Just learn from them. Repeating them and being aware of it is the dangerous bit.

We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.

Suspicion shall be all stuck full of eyes.

It's hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness.