The conventional wisdom is that if you are gay, you cannot play the romantic straight lead in a movie.

Even now, there are young actors who want careers as romantic leading men, and the best thing is not to reveal you're gay.

The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn't do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was nowhere you could go to be romantic outside of people's houses.

I certainly don't disparage someone whose attitude towards their work is utterly different from mine - that's up to them.

The battle going on over gay marriage in America reveals an awful lot. The Bible belt - people hate gay people. Because the Bible tells them? No, the Bible tells them an awful lot of things that they ignore.

It's only fair that stable gay relationships of long standing should have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples. I know the image of gay marriage is to some people horrific and ludicrous.

How delightful to find a friend in everyone.

Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family.

Man is what he reads.

It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.

A person sets out to write a poem for a variety of reasons: to win the heart of his beloved; to express his attitude toward the reality surrounding him, be it a landscape or a state; to capture his state of mind at a given instant; to leave - as he thinks at that moment - a trace on the earth.

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.

I like the idea of isolation. I like the reality of it. You realize what you are... not that the knowledge is inevitably rewarding.

This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to read poetry, seems to be dangerous if not tragic.

To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment.

Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.

Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language's own means.

The more one reads poetry, the less tolerant one becomes of any sort of verbosity, be that in political or philosophical discourse, be that in history, social studies or the art of fiction.

Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it is not widely distributed.

My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume and be distributed in far greater volume, in far more substantial manner. You can sell in supermarkets very cheaply. In paperbacks. You can sell in drugstores.

I am a patriot, but I must say that English poetry is the richest in the world.

Poetry is not an art or a branch of art: it's something more.

If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal.

Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.

American poetry to me is a sort of relentless, nonstop sermon on human autonomy.

Tyranny will make an entire population into readers of poetry.

American poetry is this country's greatest patrimony. It takes a stranger to see some things clearly. This is one of them, and I am that stranger.

Poetry isn't just different from prose, it's more important for the human species.

The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.

People who buy 'The National Enquirer' would buy poetry. They should be given a choice. I'm absolutely serious.

Bad politics make for bad morals.

I belong to the Russian language. As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives.

Who included me among the ranks of the human race?

My faith helps me understand that circumstances don't dictate my happiness, my inner peace.

Man gives you the award but God gives you the reward.

I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me - spiritually and financially.

If you don't trust the pilot, don't go.

My mother used to tell me man gives the award, God gives the reward. I don't need another plaque.

I wasn't allowed to go to movies when I was kid; my father was a minister. 101 Dalmatians and King of Kings, that was the extent of it.

It's simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they're done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it's what they see. That's where my head is at.

I'm not a film buff. I don't watch a lot of movies.

Growing up I didn't watch movies.

I never really had the classic struggle. I had faith.

My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.

I've learned that friendship does not equate business, business does not equate friendship.

The highs, the lows, the peaks, the valleys, whatever, it's all going to go into the art, whether I'm singing or acting or whatever.

When I first became famous, I didn't know if I could go where I wanted to because I didn't know how people were going to act. Some folks would scream and holler, and I didn't know what to do with that.

As slavery died for the greater good of America, and the movement for equality sputtered to life, the white woman was on the cover of every American magazine. She was the dazzling jewel on every movie screen, the glory of every commercial and television show.

One of the things I love about Africa is the amount of dignity and respect and humility you see all the time. You don't realise how often you're disrespected until you are surrounded by respect.