There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling and waiting for traces of blood to appear in the water.

In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics in religion in philosophy as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.

I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats we will stop telling the truth about them.

I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian.

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.

That's a wonderful change that's taken place and so most poetry today is published if not directly by the person certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself working with his friends.

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.

I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife who was very smart about poetry.

I was excited by what my painter friends were doing and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too and that was a wonderful little fizzy sort of world.

I published privately a collection of my serious poetry I had written over the years. I only published 50 copies which I gave to friends in a special deluxe edition. It was ridiculously expensive but I'm glad that I did it.

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things but they are the state of human existence.

On July 26 1916 I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.

When I was in college I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.

Poetry and music are very good friends. Like mommies and daddies and strawberries and cream - they go together.

Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies when a baby is born or when we fall in love.

It doesn't work if the bad guys kill his mother's uncle's friend's neighbor's pet dog. You've got to make the stakes high.

It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert gentle and discriminating friends who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions they pass no criticisms.

A peace deal requires agreements and you don't make agreements with your friends you make agreements with your enemies.

I'm at peace with my family my friends myself and God so there's really nothing else that I worry about.

You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.

The only peace that can be made with a dictator is once that must be based on deterrence. For today the dictator may be your friend but tomorrow he will need you as an enemy.