We all think of ourselves as our subjectivity, our consciousness.

I was always a reader. In the fifth grade, I got some sort of prize for having read hundreds of books from the library.

The sun does what it does because the earth tilts.

Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life. The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.

Society imposes an identity on you because of the way you look. Your struggle as a self has to do with an identity being imposed on you that you know is not your identity.

You probably have to split yourself in various ways just in order to survive, and to think of yourself as a multitude.

I would say that when I write prose I'm a more socially responsible person. I'm much more a citizen of the world. But the instability of the poetry, the emotional jaggedness, is also me.

You don't think of yourself as your external representation, or even your national origin or anything like that. You don't reduce yourself to that. That's kind of unthinkable.

I resist thinking of myself as a teacher. I think of myself as a writer who has pulled a fast one and hoodwinked this institution into giving me a job and health insurance.

I think that when you reveal things that are going to cause pain, you have rhetorical resources in poetry.

It's important for all writers to try to figure out what they're doing.

we must take care of our families wherever we find them.

When the cat's away the mice will play.

Working on The West Wing was similar in many ways to my experience on M*A*S*H, because you had people willing to work late at night to get it just right.

I have a horror of sentimentality, and I cannot forget that its name is Saint-Saëns.

Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.

The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God.

What would become of all historical biography if it was written only with consideration for other peoples' feelings?

You've developed the strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil ... you are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability.

The two best times to fish is when it's raining and when it ain't.

Java is like a variant of the game of Tetris in which none of the pieces can fill gaps created by the other pieces, so all you can do is pile them up endlessly.