Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.

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.

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

There was a skyness to the sky and a nowness to the world that he had never seen or felt or realized before.

The goal of the EU is to form a region of freedom, security and justice. Freedom in this connection cannot be just the freedom of the strong, but it must be combined with fraternity and equality.

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

St. Peter, on my judgment day, will not ask me about the B-2 or my defense votes. He will ask me about my vote to protect innocent human life.

The world must live. We are only one species among billions. The gods don't love us any more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies.

Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.

It was eerie. I saw myself in that machine. I never thought my work would come to this.

If you can't use dividends, it's not a bad thing to give it back to your shareholders. They'll use it somewhere else.

A young man should ask himself not if it is his duty to go to the heathen, but if he may dare stay at home. The command is so plain: “Go.”