None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

When you translate poetry in particular you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words sentences phrases the triple tension between the line of verse the syntax and the sentence.

I'm not really one for fancy big words and poetry and the scriptwriters worked very hard on 'Paradise Lost' to translate it.

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science along with behaviour control genetic engineering transplanted heads computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

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.

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance like a signpost or a warning notice.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

Well I think by any expectation South Africa has come a tremendously long way. We've seen a society that many people thought couldn't withstand a peaceful transition to democracy without a great deal of violence in fact make that transition and do it in relative peace and security.

Our civilization is now in the transition stage between the age of warring empires and a new age of world unity and peace.

There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred - by living our ideals the Peace Corps exchange students teachers exporting our music poetry blue jeans.

I feel that my father's greatest legacy was the people he inspired to get involved in public service and their communities to join the Peace Corps to go into space. And really that generation transformed this country in civil rights social justice the economy and everything.

We can realise a lasting peace and transform the East-West relationship to one of enduring co-operation.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment and there's been a liberating force that's come from it.

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings one individual at a time.

Nature chooses who will be transgender individuals don't choose this.

Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

I'd love to do a modern-day musical that's full of original music. To get your contemporaries to sing and dance without looking foolish and for it to be transformational and magical and all those things a musical is supposed to be.

I think the difficult thing is the transition between TV competition series and going into the actual music industry. There still seems to be a slight disconnect there.

It's been a transformative period and I really wanted to make music from what I've experienced.

In the course of transferring all my CDs to my iPod I have found myself wandering the musical hallways of my past and reacquainting myself with music I haven't listened to in years.