One will never again look at a birch tree, after the Robert Frost poem, in exactly the same way.

I think poetry is best read to oneself.

I've always had an active imagination.

No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results?

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools.

In the past, poetry came in the form of spells and chants used to effect change.

If poetry alters the way in which the reader views the world, then it has had its desired effect.

My obsession with time informs my poetry so completely it is hard for me to summarize it. We want time to pass, for new things to happen to us, we want to hold on to certain moments, we don't want our lives to end.

I like poems that are little games.

I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry.

I think what will happen is that fiction will become more like poetry. As in, the only people who read it will write it.

The founding father of Albanian literature is the nineteenth-century writer Naim Frasheri. Without having the greatness of Dante or Shakespeare, he is nonetheless the founder, the emblematic character. He wrote long epic poems, as well as lyrical poetry, to awaken the national consciousness of Albania.

I first came across the script for 'Macbeth' between the ages of 11 and 12; it was the first book that shook my life. Because I did not yet understand that I could simply purchase it in a bookstore, I copied much of it by hand and took it home. My childhood imagination pushed me to feel like a co-author of the play.

In 1971, when I was 29, I wrote my first volume of poetry. I am a poet, and I have published four books of my poems.

Learning how to learn is life's most important skill.

Many think of memory as rote learning, a linear stuffing of the brain with facts, where understanding is irrelevant. When you teach it properly, with imagination and association, understanding becomes a part of it.

Mind mapping is a technique based on memory and creativity and comprehension and understanding, so when the student or a child uses the mind map, they are using their brain in the way their brain was designed to be used, and so the mind helps them in all learning and cognitive skills. It simply helps them in what the brain does naturally.

Children need stimulation and stability. That can come from grandparents, cousins, teachers, nannies, childcare centres - as long as they engage with the children and are really fond of them. There are also times when children need to be left alone to learn to be independent and to encourage their imaginary friends.

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.

There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

For me, poetry was... the fastest way to express what I was feeling, what I was going through.

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.

So I suppose poetry, language, the shaping of it, was and remains for me an effort to make sense out of essentially senseless situations.

You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words.

A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances.

To be born in Wales, not with a silver spoon in your mouth, but, with music in your blood and with poetry in your soul, is a privilege indeed.

For me, poetry is always a search for order.

We can only move to a long-term resolution regarding terrorism and war by planting seeds of peace. We have to start with ourselves.

There's nothing like the peace of the countryside, the quiet and the lack of distraction. It helps you to focus your mind.

It is impossible to practice parliamentary politics without having patience, decency, politeness and courtesy.

The nation voted us to power to see unity and communal harmony, not for any division or communality.

America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.

I'm very concerned about the tone of politics in recent years. We've seen a decline in civility and bipartisanship, and a rapid increase in hostility between those who have differing opinions. I think this has led to the alienation of the public in governance, which jeopardizes democratic participation.

I think what endurance sports teach you is to stay dedicated, stay focused, and also to understand you're going to have ups and downs, but you need to keep running right through them.

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty.

Someday when peace has returned to this odd world I want to come to London again and stand on a certain balcony on a moonlit night and look down upon the peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark bridges.

If you go long enough without a bath, even the fleas will leave you alone.

Instead of a man of peace and love, I have become a man of violence and revenge.

Every human longs for peace and love.

Peace will be when you accept it in your heart.

We must think differently, look at things in a different way. Peace requires a world of new concepts, new definitions.

We must fight terrorism as if there's no peace process and work to achieve peace as if there's no terror.

You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.

Economics, politics, and personalities are often inseparable.

You find that you have peace of mind and can enjoy yourself, get more sleep, and rest when you know that it was a one hundred percent effort that you gave - win or lose.