I have never sat down and studied the Bible, never consciously echoed its language, and am, in reality, as ignorant of it as most brought-up Christians. All of the Bible that I use in my work is...

A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.

It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.

I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.

If the track is tough and the hill is rough, THINKING you can just ain't enough!

If we see light at the end of the tunnel, it's the light of the oncoming train.

I had studied Irish history. I had read speeches from the dock. I had tried to fuse the vivid past of my nation with the lost spaces of my childhood. I had learned the battles, the ballads, the...

Cockneys make good beggars. They are held in high esteem by the fraternity in America. Their resource, originality and invention, and a never-faltering tongue enable them to often attain their ends...

In Berlin I especially enjoyed the orchestral concerts, and I attended a large number of them. I formed the acquaintance of a good many musicians, several of whom spoke of my playing in high terms.

Losing my father made me want to find out if I could come up with a version of God or the afterlife that I could feel like was acceptable now that both my parents are in it.

Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

A person can only be born in one place. However, he may die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and oppression into a nightmare.

Extremes meet, as the whiting said with its tail in its mouth.

To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white.

The soul is neither inside nor outside the body; neither proximate to nor separate from it.

I'm a writer who simply can't know what I'm writing about until the writing lets me discover it. In a sense, my writing process embraces the gapped nature of my memory process, leaping across spaces...

Why should the eyes be denied what delights them most?

I live to collect information, and I am also a perfectionist.

Majesty and love do not consort well together, nor do they dwell in the same place.

So much inspires me. People living their lives with courage, beauty of all kinds, nature in all its aspects, people I love and people I hardly know, and, of course, other poets.

Now the Bible tells us that we are all by nature, sinners, that we are slaves to sin and Satan, and that unless we are converted, or born again, we must be miserable forever.

Although your knowledge is weak and small, you need not be silent: since you cannot be judges be at least witnesses.

Courage: A great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.

Age is not our fault.

When my children were very young, I was slated to go on a business trip. When it was nearly canceled, I decided I wouldn't tell anyone and go off for a week's vacation anyway. In the end, the trip...

What men call accident is God's own part.

We always may be what we might have been.

Be bold and boast, just like the cock beside the hen.

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.