Sometimes when I am writing, I am aware of a rhythm, a dance, a fury, which is as yet empty of words.

When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.

History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.

When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course.

I think continually of those who were truly great.

There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife - a tyrannical midwife.

All that you can imagine you already know.

So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself

All the posters on the walls All the leaflets in the streets Are mutilated, destroyed or run in rain, Their words blotted out with tears, Skins peeling from their bodies In the victorious hurricane.

I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.

I'm confident that America's foreign policy rebalance to the region will endure beyond my presidency because it's in the national interest of the United States.

You are more likely to believe that a statement is true if you have heard it before - whether or not it is actually true.

False praise is worse than no praise.

I cannot resign myself to the decline of Europe, and of France.

They're my burka... I'm a little shortsighted, and people, when they're shortsighted, they remove their glasses and then they look like cute little dogs who want to be adopted.

Epigrams delight us into wisdom.

These are roots of all evil, hatred and greed, for money, for the construction and for the sale of weapons. This should make us all think, who is behind it all?

Knowing Latin and having two years of Attic Greek gave me the strong foundation upon which I've built a career. I think the classical training, more than anything, has provided me with longevity.

and then she asks me how many sexual partners I've had and I say one or two depending on your definition of what I did to Custer . . .