What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

I think it was lucky that during most of the work on the Odyssey I lived on Homer's sea in houses that were, in one case, shaken by the impact of the Mediterranean winter storms on the rocks below.

Is encouragement what the poet needs? Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact, quite a few of them need more discouragement, the most discouragement possible.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.

Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.

In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

I think that everyone who took part has always been grateful for it.

Of course the other and more serious way in which it all happens is that one finds in poems and language some quality one appropriates for oneself and wishes to reproduce.

When that light within begins to dim, fan the flame just enough to spark something!

In Flanders' fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row That mark our place and in the sky The larks still bravely singing fly Scarce heard among the guns below.

Everyone in Hollywood thinks like a Republican fiscally by leaving town to shoot everything; they just don't vote that way.

I love the water more than anything. I'm not very good at sunbathing - I get really bored. I love swimming and I love being like a fish and getting in the sea and just - I don't know, it feels right.

Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss

The right to work is a slogan which should be accepted by every democracy.

It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong.

Rugged strength and radiant beauty-- These were one in Nature's plan; Humble toil and heavenward duty-- These will form the perfect man.

We are not to be isolated but insulated, moving in the midst of evil but untouched by it.

When death becomes the property of the believer it receives a new name and is called sleep.