The trouble with Nixon is that he's a serious politics junkie. He's totally hooked and like any other junkie he's a bummer to have around especially as President.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry needs. An audience of around 200 is ideal for poetry.

But poetry is a way of language it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history.

I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and yes read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language though so I am always aware of every word's meaning or multiple meanings.

Still language is resilient and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground poets in schools football clubs zoos.

Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen a lot of them will.

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

It's always a combination of physics and poetry that I find inspiring. It's hard to wrap your head around things like the Hubble scope.

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere but putting it on paper is alas not so easy as looking at it.

I'm sorry man but I've got magic. I've got poetry in my fingertips. Most of the time - and this includes naps - I'm an F-18 bro. And I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordinance to the ground.

There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever buy a dog feed it and keep it around.

A dog teaches a boy fidelity perseverance and to turn around three times before lying down.

I was surrounded by nature and trying to come to terms with this blissful nature versus the inhumane mentality of war. People were being deluded by someone using the word peace.

The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization.

The Arabs could have peace tomorrow if sufficient numbers of Palestinians were not content to be used as cannon fodder in fruitless assaults on Israel even as the surrounding Arab powers distract the Arab masses with the red herring of Israel while retarding their countries with their repression and corruption.

I am President of the UN created University for Peace which has a strong commitment to the relationship between peace security and the environment. I meet with young people around the world and I always come away enthused and encouraged.