What we know is that Shakespeare wrote perhaps the most remarkable body of passionate love poetry in the English language to a young man.

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.

I've always written all my life and when I was very young I developed an interest in poetry.

I was a visual artist primarily and a writer even from a very young age. I wrote a lot of stories and poetry and... I had a desire to create always. And I always had a desire to show my work.

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 wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals but even as I withdrew into this reading I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

When I was younger I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is prose = words in their best order - poetry = the best words in the best order.

I created the Women's Federation for World Peace in order to restore all that woman originally lost. You American women don't need a man in the position of grandfather parents husband elder or younger brother. You only need the true Adam.

The Peace Corps would give thousands of young Americans a chance to see at first hand the conditions in remote areas of the world.

I am President of the UN created University for Peace which has a strong commitment to the relationship between peace security and the environment. I meet with young people around the world and I always come away enthused and encouraged.

When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.

As a young boy I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer where one of the most needed qualities is patience.

It seems likely that many of the young who don't wait for others to call them artists but simply announce that they are don't have the patience to make art.

A show that no one thought had a chance has just finished its fifth year: Charmed. I think it's tougher for the younger networks so I think they have a little more patience for the sake of the show. But who knows?

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes packaged cake mixes frozen dinners and instant cameras teach patience to its young?

It's human nature to be curious about people and to be more curious about young people than old people. We want to cheer something on at the same time we want to tear it down. That's just so normal.

To make a love story you need a couple of young people but to reflect on the nature of love you're better off with old ones. That is a fact of life and literature - and of the novel ever since it fell in love with love in the 18th century.

As parents grandparents uncles and aunts we need to start getting out into nature with the young people in our lives. Families play a key role in getting kids outside.

I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.

I pity the young woman who will attempt to insinuate herself between my mama's boy and me. I sympathize with the monumental nature of her task. It will take a crowbar two bulldozers and half a dozen Molotov cocktails to pry my Oedipus and me loose from one another.

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations that a young person who either marries or dies is sure of being kindly spoken of.

What I was going for in the first two albums I didn't necessarily achieve. Because I was young and because it was my first time out. And the second album was such a 'quickie' sort of 'Let's just get it over with!' But the kind of music I make there's a lot of subtlety in it. And I think it takes a couple of listens to actually really get it.