My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

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

All I know is a door into the dark

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

I'm afraid of freedom, it feels like some drunk guy could show up and burn my dacha at any moment.

Every reader wants the same thing: to open the cover of a book and watch the words explode like fireworks off the page.

I find something fascinating about the quiet man in the background who has no desire to be the center of attention.

If people would treat themselves with the same kind of love they give to their friends, that would be such a great gift we could give ourselves.

Having a vote once every four years is not the same thing as democracy.

We are born sad and we die sad, but meanwhile we love bodies whose sad beauty is a miracle.

In principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it.

The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.

I find ways to make things affordable. If the kids want the looks, they can be able to go afford it.

After the advent of the written word, the masses who could not - or were not permitted to - read, were given sermons by the few who could.