Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.

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.

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.

You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you...

Life begins with hope. Every seed has the hope of becoming a tree.

​The destiny of nations depends upon the manner in which they feed themselves.

It is only when you don't want to do something that you never get the time to do it.

It can't rain all the time.

Like everything else I teach in my coaching, staying in shape for me is about the little actions and changes in lifestyle that have a huge effect over time.

Our diversity is not something that is on paper. It is the manifestation of our strength. It is not only our identity but also our tradition.

Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me

But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in the Central European region.