Collaborating with someone who doesn't understand your language nor you theirs stretches you open even wider, into a sort of very large free fall.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world.

It is not easy writing someone a postcard. The size and shape of the card cut you down to size.

Not everyone is at the top of his or her game all the time - you can't be.

Maybe lurking in my unconscious was the idea that when someone's collected poems are published it means that the poet is dead. I found myself looking at my work as if I were at my own funeral.

So writing about love or having it infuse the poems that I'm writing has never been something I've set myself to do, except when I write a poem for my wife, for an occasion, such as our anniversary.

I don't do much of anything consciously in writing - in poetry writing, anyway, prose usually being a different matter, of course.

It seems more than likely that the translating of poetry is going to rub off on the translator if he or she is a poet.

Everything seems so small, so trivial, when you're on the right altitude.

I envied these women I saw before me, their beauty still intact. Life has its revenge of life. Untimely death is the secret of eternal youth.

Always aim for achievement, and forget about success.

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.

Spreadable butter is wonderful for cake-making: it's much easier to cream than the block type and slightly lighter because it's blended with oil.

Sometimes I just wish nobody knew who I was.

There's so many lessons I get from chess, it's incredible, but I think the biggest thing for me has always been is that losing is learning.

Fashion is a function of lifestyle, and style a function of quality, integrity and timelessness.

The mind, unless it is pure and holy, cannot see God.

The ability to plan for what has not yet happened, for a future that has only been imagined, is one of the hallmarks of leadership.