There is not built-in meaning to anything, we are free to add any meaning we choose to give it.

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 problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem.

A man cannot be comfortable [or cannot be made comfortable] without his own approval.

Charity, vertical, humiliates. Solidarity, horizontal, helps.

Bible revelations are not against reason but above reason, for the uses of faith, mans highest faculty.

Psychologically speaking, one may say that the hypocrite is too ambitious; not only does he want to appear virtuous before others, he wants to convince himself.

All things considered, nothing is beautiful.

History does not move by leaps into unrelated novelty, but rather by the selective emphasis of aspects of its own immediate past.

But theres a huge blessing that comes from being a part of a show like The Cosby Show that sets such a high standard of quality - it touched so many people on so many different levels.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want to try it again and again, and a lot of times my fellow musicians have to hold me back and say, "Nah, I think we got it."

You are the harmony within which all things move. They are just illusion.