Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.

And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of May, And touched the nodding peony flowers to bid them waken.

The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn't exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so.

The dead...are more real than the living because they are complete.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

And when the war is done and youth stone dead, I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

Life for the majority of the population. Is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds. Culminating in a cheap funeral.

I was not merely cleaning an oven

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

The situation is clear. I trust in my ability, I trust in what I do and, if people put their trust in me, I will deliver for them.

If the work jells a little bit in terms of being placed in the oeuvre, I don't care - as long as it works.

The sunlight that has brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

Keep walking the walk, one step at a time.

Imagination is the doorway you walk through into every future moment. Are you walking through doorways to pain or to joy?

Gold gives to the ugliest thing a certain charming air, For that without it were else a miserable affair.

Any stimulus package amounts to taking money from the pockets of some Americans and placing it in the pockets of others who have better political connections.

[On the racial backlash about Hunger Games casting]: "People should have ignored the five racist idiots.