The only way that we're going to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we've put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that.

Facing the press is not easy but because you have to go you have to try to take a lot of positive things for yourself from these face-to-face meetings.

I presume that nobody will deny the positive aspects of the North American cultural world. These are well known to all. But these aspects do not make one forget the disastrous effects of the industrial and commercial process of 'cultural lamination' that the USA is perpetrating on the planet.

The job numbers are positive. We've had more jobs created now than were lost during the recession. We're seeing that the creation we're seeing those numbers not only grow but shift toward the private sector and shift toward full-time employment and these are all signs that the recovery is taking some hold but we're not out of woods.

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e. 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

You have to listen to the people who have a negative opinion as well as those who have positive opinion. Just to make sure that you are blending all these opinions in your mind before a decision is made.

People meet in bars after work all over the world and talk about the great problems of life and death and the world and politics and they don't take themselves seriously. They can do nothing else except chat about these things in bars after work.

I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy with kings queens dukes and court politics but of course like what I was explaining before about making the science make sense you have to make the politics make sense too.

I always had a long-term view of going into politics so I suppose I was always careful. I mean I got offered all these rinky dink tax deals but I always paid my taxes. I am naturally quite conservative.

There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues the populists the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the realm in politics.

These days politics religion media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.

You have to take away some of tax breaks for the wealthy and you have to cut back on some entitlements. Because unless we do all of these things it just doesn't work. And what's good theater and what's good politics isn't necessarily good economic policy.

It's really very simple Governor. When people are hungry they die. So spare me your politics and tell me what you need and how you're going to get it to these people.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

I've got a book of poetry by the bed one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans.

We recognise in the finished art which is the result of these conditions the best words in the best order - poetry and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible.

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles theses and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction but often it's really just about the money the perceived prestige.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

You know in my music career there was a moment where the irony was just so heavy. There were people in my audience that were the reason I developed neuroses. These people that tortured my life were using my art my poetry as fuel for them to torture other people.

When you're going through something whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody you often feel like 'Oh my God I'm so overwhelmed I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact poetry's a nice reminder that no everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.

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.

In their heyday the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They're low-pro now not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode New Order or The Cure but you can hear the reason why - these guys are too sad.