I think it is extremely interesting to think that, in some cases, vice might be, finally, more redemptive than virtue.

It should be everyone's right in a capitalist system to have some way to take advantage of compound interest.

What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit. As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees.

The sum of the parts equals less than the whole. Or the howl. Or the how. Or the hole.

I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it).

It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

When I moved to New York, the reputation just followed me, and I am regularly invited to play in home games, by writers in particular, though finance folk also invite me on occasion.

Poetry is God's work.

It is bizarre that some people can't understand how a serious poet could work at a finance firm. Goethe was a bureaucrat. Eliot worked as a banker.

I do think most poets are in denial about what the real taboos in writing are--the real boundaries.

Love, when spelled backwards and read phonetically, reads evil

Like other spiritual fruit, joy must be cultivated.

Perhaps people hate because it's more difficult to love. It also takes more courage to do the latter.

Fish would probably be the last of all creatures to discover water.

Only great people can make great products.

In America, it's quite admirable if someone's done well or been successful at whatever it is. Whereas in Britain, they're not. They only like it when you're the underdog.

The quality of life, values that go down to doin' that, that's the issue.

I am highly susceptible to the force of all truly religious music, especially to the music of my own church, the church of Shelley, Michelangelo, and Beethoven.

Everybody should have an equal chance - but they shouldn't have a flying start.

Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we can turn to the world, and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear conscience.