In a funny way, poems are suited to modern life. They're short, they're intense. Nobody has time to read a 700-page book. People read magazines, and a poem takes less time than an article.

I can’t stand to hear his [Obama’s] voice anymore. He’s a liar, and worse.

There's so much to think about when you're becoming an adult, and there's so many great poems about that apprehension and excitement.

I can see both sides of term limits, and I think, in different positions, term limits make more sense than in some others.

The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.

You have to remind kids to stay connected to the meaning of Christmas. Sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, but it's so worth it.

After my mom died, there was so much written about her fashion and her style and all that, and I felt that one of the most important parts of her was missing, her real intellectual curiosity.

As much as we need a prosperous economy, we also need a prosperity of kindness and decency.

When you make the right decision, it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks.

I think my mother... made it clear that you have to live life by your own terms and you have to not worry about what other people think and you have to have the courage to do the unexpected.

People don't always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.

There is no intellectual road to God...No, we need God to wake us up to our need of a Savior.

And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer: until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things.

The frail, vulnerable sounds of which we are capable seem to be essential to a later ability to roar like a lion without scaring everyone to death.

...Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring.

I get more excited about like, "How nice is the piano?" or "How does the room sound?" I don't really see the gear so much anymore.

A positive attitude toward life is always better.

Any moment you spend attacking yourself is a moment away from your higher purpose and your power to love. Don't go there.

I'm not a soldier for anything, either. I'm only a singer and I don't think it makes a difference what we sing.

The plain fact is that we are starving people, not deliberately in the sense that we want them to die, but wilfully in the sense that we prefer their death to our own inconvenience.

Family is what really runs through my head. I'm usually bombarded with tons of phone calls, but I'm usually bombarded with love as well.