I'm highly political. I spend an awful lot of time in the U.S. trying to influence decision-makers. But I don't feel in tune with British politics.

My shows aren't about trying to save some place because I don't feel that's the right venue for it. That's my politics right there: Don't bring politics to my shows.

I like to see myself as a bridge builder that is me building bridges between people between races between cultures between politics trying to find common ground.

We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing economics politics - trying to play a serious part in the world - to a culture that's really entertainment-based.

I don't think politics has anything to do with left right or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers their trying their hand at poetry.

I wanted to reimagine the role in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents events preoccupations and to spend a great deal of time going to schools trying to demystify poetry.

Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is you need to talk with children to teachers and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.

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.

You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble.

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

You can get too bogged down in technology and you can sort of forget what it is you were trying to do. And with the Pet Shop Boys it's primarily about the songs it's about song writing.

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.

As a privileged survivor of the First World War I hope I may be allowed to interject here a deeply felt tribute to those who were not fortunate enough to succeed but who shared the signal honor of trying to the last to salvage peace.

I was surrounded by nature and trying to come to terms with this blissful nature versus the inhumane mentality of war. People were being deluded by someone using the word peace.

United Nations peacekeepers are going all over the world spreading AIDS even while they're trying to bring peace. What a supreme irony.

I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody are they really the radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside.

Most of the approaches to peace between Israel and the Palestinians have been directed at trying to resolve the most complex problems like refugees and Jerusalem which is akin to building the pyramid from the top down.

You know I think I think the Palestinians are trying to get away without negotiating. They're trying to get a state to continue the conflict with Israel rather than to end it. They're trying to basically detour around peace negotiations by going to the U.N. and have the automatic majority in the U.N. General Assembly give them give them a state.

The Palestinians want a state but they have to give peace in return. What they're trying to do in the United Nations is to get a state without giving Israel peace or giving Israel peace and security. And I think that's that's wrong. That should not succeed. That should that should fail.

When Communist U.S.S.R. was a superpower the world was better off. The right-wing media is trying to marginalize the peace movement.

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.

Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel. We are not trying to keep out of trouble we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.

I get those fleeting beautiful moments of inner peace and stillness - and then the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day I'm a human trying to make it through in this world.