What drew me to politics in the first place was the fact that I wanted to have a place to take a stand and use my voice to express what I believed in. But I've no longer got any political aspirations. I feel that as a politician fifty per cent of people would hate you before you even left the house.

As a black woman my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.

If a politician murders his mother the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.

Since the printing press came into being poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man it has become the amusement and delight of the few.

The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots its business was to express the heroic saga the myths.

The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.

A lyric it is true is the expression of personal emotion but then so is all poetry and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry differing from each other in essence is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.

My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there I know there will be people who will listen.

We all need ways to express ourselves and poetry is one of mine.

Still language is resilient and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

Religious poetry civic poetry lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.

A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things which ponders listens penetrates where the earlier less developed consciousness passed lightly by is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry.

Poetry is simply the most beautiful impressive and widely effective mode of saying things.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night lying in bed thinking what you really think making the private world public that's what the poet does.

It's something we guys have all done. Made tapes for girls trying to impress them to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it because you're too awkward to do it.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But of course only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things to me are expressions of love.

Certainly protecting oppressed people stopping ethnic conflict and promoting responsible governance are worthy goals. But none is as important for American security and prosperity as keeping the peace in the Middle East Europe and East Asia.

Rwanda was considered a second-class operation because it was a small country we had been able to maintain a kind of status quo. They were negotiating they'd accepted the new peace project so we were under the impression that everything would be solved easily.

Unfortunately little attention was paid to how Arafat ruled. In fact some saw the harsh and repressive nature of Arafat's regime as actually bolstering the prospects for peace.

The Arabs could have peace tomorrow if sufficient numbers of Palestinians were not content to be used as cannon fodder in fruitless assaults on Israel even as the surrounding Arab powers distract the Arab masses with the red herring of Israel while retarding their countries with their repression and corruption.

I cannot think of anything more difficult than to say something which would be worthy of this impressive and for me memorable occasion and of the ideals and purposes which inspired the Nobel Peace Award.

The years of the economic depression have been years of political reaction and that is why the economic crisis has generated a world peace crisis.