But I think there's something wonderful and extraordinary about climbing on your own and just that kind of relationship to the environment. I'm very addicted to the mountains. You know so I do like that solitude.

The establishment wonders why we can't get more of the black vote. It's because it's not doing the things necessary to establish a deeper relationship with the black community. Most black people don't think alike. Most black people just vote alike.

We have a strange and wonderful relationship - he's strange and I'm wonderful.

When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control and then says I'm not sorry and I'd do it again no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads.

Woes and wonders of Power that tonic hell synthesis of poison and panacea.

It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears it seems are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.

There is so much that is positive wonderful even about state schools. At a state school your kids will learn to live alongside and appreciate other kids from many diverse and different cultures.

I'm concentrating on the positive on all the wonderful things I'm doing now.

The wonderful Mozambican people have endured tremendous misery without losing their dignity and their positive outlook on life. Moreover they have not lost their will to progress and develop. Mozambique is a country where the people never surrendered.

I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life or in the politics of the world around you it is wonderful to go into that studio and tell yourself what to do.

Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game.

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed in the face of every constitutional convention only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out do not vote or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe and which mean very little.

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets how they've used tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.

That's a wonderful change that's taken place and so most poetry today is published if not directly by the person certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself working with his friends.

There is a wonderful Hungarian literature especially in lyric poetry.

I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife who was very smart about poetry.

I was excited by what my painter friends were doing and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too and that was a wonderful little fizzy sort of world.

And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry.

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

Poetry is always slightly mysterious and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

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 a deal of joy and pain and wonder with a dash of the dictionary.