Trauma reflected upon in tranquility can produce morally stunning insights - literary light! It can also produce maudlin rubbish.

Consumerism is our national religion.

As the medieval mind blamed God for human suffering, so the modern mind blames 'the system' for the industrial blight and plague of technology.

One parody is worth a thousand polemics.

What you say is who you are. How you say it is your style.

Technology evolves so much faster than wisdom.

When I went to school, they told me literature was a rope I must use to climb out of the dark well of unknowing. Writers are the knots on the rope.

Perception is a prism, and reality is like shot silk - depends where the light hits.

Longing is all that lasts.

like any Irish mother, I am scar tissue to the bone.

During the summertime, I really like to dress like a gypsy. I love that whole lifestyle and the whole mixing of fabrics and flowy materials.

And if we burn, you burn with us.

Freedom and dignity for everyone in the world, is the hardest thing to achieve, but we must not give up.

I'm always talking about how the poems I am most obsessed with are like people: complex and unknowable and with a huge capacity for many different emotions.

You can't pretend that everybody likes Versace. It would be boring. It's better to create a reaction than to create no reaction. That's dangerous.

Through small apertures we glimpse abysses whose sombre depths turn us faint. And yet over the whole there hovers an extraordinary tenderness.

The military said we'll be able to confirm Saddam is dead with DNA testing. Apparently we have a sample of his DNA. So Monica Lewinsky is working for the CIA?

Fear is a feeling that is stronger than love.

Challenge everything, assume nothing.

If you are passionate, be passionate about the highest, the most wonderful, and the most beautiful. Be passionate about this entire creation for everything is so beautiful.

We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.