There is this concept of politics as a dirty game. It's a difficult game but it doesn't have to be dirty. I think this is what we need to bring to politics. I think politics around the world has very often been captured by big interests - 'lobbies' they call them in the States.

It is important to recognize and politics positive thinking is often the slaves' virtue - something that people do to con themselves about the burden and change being placed upon them.

But being in the closet uniquely assisted me in politics. From my first run for the state legislature until my election as governor all too often I was not leading but following my best guess at public opinion.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting but they have something missing in their natures there is a hole an empty place and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

I came into politics because I wished to change things. You can't do that by lying to people you have to educate and persuade and carry them with you - and it's often a long haul.

Of course there are regrets. I shall regret always that I found my own authentic voice in politics. I was too conservative too conventional. Too safe too often. Too defensive. Too reactive. Later too often on the back foot.

Talk of citizenship today is often thin and tinny. The word has a faintly old-fashioned feel to it when used in everyday conversation. When evoked in national politics it's usually accompanied by the shrill whine of a descending culture-war mortar.

Economics politics and personalities are often inseparable.

Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof it is temporary expedient often wise in party politics almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.

When you're looking that far out you're giving people their place in the universe it touches people. Science is often visual so it doesn't need translation. It's like poetry it touches you.

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.

I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me.

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction but often it's really just about the money the perceived prestige.

Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape sometimes out of one's cultural myths and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.

Because in fact women feminists do read my poetry and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care that's what poetry is supposed to do.

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry as such.

Poetry it is often said and loudly so is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.

When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences I often read poetry.

The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from and it gets isolated by crisis and those crises are often very intimate also.

I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry.

When you're going through something whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody you often feel like 'Oh my God I'm so overwhelmed I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact poetry's a nice reminder that no everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.

Too often in the past U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks.

I have often supported Israel I have often visited the country and want the country to exist and at last find peace with its neighbours.