I wanted to reimagine the role in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents events preoccupations and to spend a great deal of time going to schools trying to demystify poetry.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find.

No part of the world can be truly understood without a knowledge of its garment of vegetation for this determines not only the nature of the animal inhabitants but also the occupations of the majority of human beings.

Idle people are often bored and bored people unless they sleep a lot are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

I would vote for the man who's lived life who's done different occupations who's been out in the real world and struggled to make a living struggled to raise a family struggled with life as it exists. So I'd vote for experience honest experience.

Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves they run about loose hungering for employment and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations which have all to do with making things already made is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship.