Sometimes you're not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I've written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback.

If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere too.

You should tell yourself frequently 'I will only react to constructive suggestions.' This gives you positive ammunition against your own negative thoughts and those of others.

You must not under any pretense allow your mind to dwell on any thought that is not positive constructive optimistic kind.

It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones you'll start having positive results.

As I've gotten older I've gotten more liberal and my father is increasingly conservative. It's so shocking to me because I always thought we had the same politics. The day I realized we voted for different presidents I practically fell out of my chair.

I kept a steel wall around my moral and sexual instincts - protecting them I thought from the threats of the real world. This gave me a tremendous advantage in politics if not in my soul. The true me my spiritual core slipped further and further from reach.

When I came into politics I always thought there was a possibility I would be killed.

Idealism is the despot of thought just as politics is the despot of will.

The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.

I never thought of politics as a profession.

To those who have exhausted politics nothing remains but abstract thought.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

I always voted at my party's call and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent thoughtful schoolchildren.

This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul.

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.

I thought we were gonna open up the world of poetry and music to all kinds of things and yet I can't really think of anyone who's done anything like it since.

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.

As to London we must console ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than it was in the days of old inwardly its poetry is much deeper.

I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.

I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.

When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.