Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

I don't like to boast but I have probably skipped more poetry than any other person of my age and weight in this country.

Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether the trick they miss is that being called this thing with the weight of tradition behind it and with the association of the Royal family does allow you to have conversations and to open doors and wallets for the good of poetry in a way that nothing else would allow.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry on the other hand poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

Each word bears its weight so you have to read my poems quite slowly.

In their heyday the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They're low-pro now not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode New Order or The Cure but you can hear the reason why - these guys are too sad.

I kind of imagine myself at eighty a cat lady.

Now people all across America are starting to believe in America again. We are coming back back to the heights of greatness back to America's proud role as a temple of justice and a champion of peace.

Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two titanic Reagan landslides peace and prosperity for eight blessed years - and even a third term for his feckless vice president George H.W. Bush.

I don't want to see the military falling. I want to see the military rising to dignified heights of professionalism and true patriotism.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

The only thing of weight that can be said against modern honor is that it is directly opposite to religion. The one bids you bear injuries with patience the other tells you if you don't resent them you are not fit to live.

Anyhow a philosophical turn of thought now was not amiss else one's patience would have given out almost at the harbour entrance. The term of her probation was eight days.

Constant repetition of tongue-twisters was like lifting weights for me but patience and persistence have paid off.

Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.

The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.

Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.

I think maybe because of the kind of music I sing people want to believe you're a diva. They can't believe after eight years and eight albums you're still relatively sane. I feel like they almost want me to throw something at somebody.

We have been working with Habitat for Humanity and we have built eighty homes 80% of which are being lived in by New Orleans' musicians. It is called the Musicians' Village and at the center is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

Boy bands should be exploded from a great height. They're just pretty people singing music written by others.

I don't have any real spirituality in my life - I'm kind of an atheist - but when music can take me to the highest heights it's almost like a spiritual feeling. It fills that void for me.