Now in New Jersey we have more government workers per square mile than any state in America. But since I've been governor we now have fewer people on the state payroll at any time since Christie Whitman left office in January 2001. That's the right direction Mr. President not the wrong direction.

I think Whitman more than any other poet possessed the gift of revealing to others the beauty of everything around us the beauty of nature the beauty of human beings.

There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler not an Ezra a Walt a thing of beauty a joy forever.

It's art that pushes against psychological and social expectations that tries to transform decay into something generative that is replicative in a baroque way that isn't about progress and wants to - as Walt Whitman put it - 'contain multitudes.'