One thing I have learned in my time in politics is that if one of the parties is shameless the other party cannot afford to be spineless.

We read too much Shakespeare at school and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama in which an impatient crown prince frets at his long subordination and begins to scheme for the throne he knows he merits was promised and has earned.

I'm not an old experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Short fiction is the medium I love the most because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that though lacking a novel's length satisfies the reader.

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry all that he has learned about poetry is only a partial assurance.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

However I learned something. I thought that if the young person the student has poetry in him or her to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching I think.

My parents were very permissive when it came to animals. As long as we earned the money to buy them and built whatever structure it was they were going to live in we could have any kind of pet we wanted. They would have let us have a rhinoceros if we could have afforded it.

War is not the quintessential emergency in which man has to prove himself as my generation learned at its school desks in the days of the Kaiser rather peace is the emergency in which we all have to prove ourselves.

I could start a war in 30 seconds. But some countries spend 100 years trying to find peace. Just like good manners peace has to be learned.

I've learned the importance of loving what you do. I have also learned more patience due to the nature of the music business.

I learned patience perseverance and dedication. Now I really know myself and I know my voice. It's a voice of pain and victory.

My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.

Such is the audacity of man that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature yea and is so bold as to challenge her in her work.

I'm so not stylish by nature but I've learned to work with what I have.

It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious he learned the habit from Nature.

The learned is happy nature to explore The fool is happy that he knows no more.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

Nobody was listening when I learned how to play music. But there's something about being on stage talking to the audience looking at them and smiling that's always been difficult for me. I'm a lot more comfortable now but there are still moments of awkwardness.

To re-embrace what I once loved about music has been a warming process for me because it's a good earned feeling now.

For I have learned to look on nature not as in the hour of thoughtless youth but hearing oftentimes the still sad music of humanity.