My teaching was animated by what I was reading and being excited by as a poet.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

All I know is a door into the dark

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

The mystery of the moment is indescribable.

When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.

Nothing and no one can harm you unless you choose to allow it.

Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake.

Too much reasoning has spoiled the contemporary mind. People have lost their hearts and faith.

I was a weirdo to want to be in show business. Most kids wanted to be teachers or nurses.

Someone once said there was a comparison between Sugar Ray Leonard and Sugar Ray Robinson. Believe me, there's no comparison. Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest.

Pardoning mercy makes way for healing mercy.

The President is the symbol of who the people of the United States are. He is the person who stands for us in the eyes of the world and the eyes of our children.