The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age.

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.

The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.

How to tell students what to look for without telling them what to see is the dilemma of teaching.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always.

The epic poet collaborates with the spirit of his time in the composition of his work. That is, if he is successful; the time may refuse to work with him, but he may not refuse to work with his time.

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

Sometimes losses in life are not losses at all. They are simply the evidence God provides, in order to build a story so profound, that it will cause social change.

It's not forgetting that heals. It's remembering.

Life was a short window and there was no sense in doing the wrong thing over and over even if it was so difficult to stop.

Faith never makes a confession.

I never look forward. I live for today. If you think about what's going to happen in a year, in two years, then you begin to plan. And plans never come true.

Like the archers of Agincourt, John O'Neal and the 254 Swiftboat Veterans took down their own haughty Frenchman.

I'd rather deal with the consequences of the truth rather than the benefits of a lie.

The mystery of one man is too immense and too profound to be explained by another man.

People tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember. Writers are always selling somebody out.

So, I'm not impressed by BP's promises and I'm not ready to take the word of a company with a track record of pursuing profit over safety.