When I was teaching, I gave a lot of my mind and anxiety to it. There was always something clenched and anxious in me until the classes were over.

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.

Liza with her acceptance could take care of tragedy

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth is unhappy though he is master of the world.

It's been phenomenal, but everybody keeps congratulating me on my resurgence and my big comeback. I haven't been away, guys. I've been working steadily for the last 63 years.

People who consider themselves political, who follow political developments most rigorously, are often those who view the political process with the greatest lack of perspective.

I have loved you woman as surely as I have named you rust and sand and nylon.

I like to think of myself as a natural gardener.

That's what they [ISIS] did, they chopped off heads. That's what we have ... [to do].

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

Plenty of men can do good work for a spurt and with immediate promotion in mind, but for promotion you want a man in whom good work has become a habit.

We were searching for ourselves in each other.