Yes you need substance in politics - but I think your style also says something about how you arrive at some of your conclusions.

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances conjectures and conjunctions.

I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics but kind of civic engagement and that kind of thing except I tended to think 'Well do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.'

A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives a politics that does not speak to and include people is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.

So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms so thinking about distance thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.

I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats.

If it is an imperfect word no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

Well the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words that is to say the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.

I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed for instance is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he's going to write poetry or songs.

When I lived in New York not only did I have safety locks on the door but I had the music going keeping the city at a distance trying to find creative time and peace and so forth.

I wish the Peace Corps and its volunteers continued success and perseverance. We are grateful for their contributions to society and dedication to providing assistance where it is needed. May the Peace Corps continue its legacy of service both at home and abroad.

The so-called peace path is not peace and it is not a substitute for jihad and resistance.

There are no absolute rules of conduct either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

You may either win your peace or buy it: win it by resistance to evil buy it by compromise with evil.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

Let's give some substance to patriotism. It may take a generation.

Across the country military families are facing dire financial circumstances due to longer than expected tours of duties. They are being penalized for their patriotism - no one should have to choose between doing right by their country and doing right by their families.

The music industry's actions at the time of 9/11 and since have been actions driven by patriotism in most instances and greed and stupidity to a lesser degree. Sounds like real life doesn't it?

We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have for instance.

Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively from a distance and at the same time can have something more personal to say about them. I am trying to look at the world and at myself from many different points of view. I think many poets have this duality.

It is a sign of a dull nature to occupy oneself deeply in matters that concern the body for instance to be over much occupied about exercise about eating and drinking about easing oneself about sexual intercourse.

All all is theft all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and without doubt the most agreeable one.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits by which we are nurtured and live.