Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I'm talking to people. It doesn't always work, and one shouldn't always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.

Many causes produce war. There are ancient hatreds, turbulent frontiers, the legacy of old forgotten, far-off things, and battles long ago. There are new-born fanaticisms. Convictions on the part of certain peoples that they have become the unique depositories of ultimate truth and right.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

Kenneth Koch

Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

Edgar Allan Poe

Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy --common clay, if you like --eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others --the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes.

Jean Anouilh

How about this for a headline for tomorrow's paper? French fries.

James French

You can't have a sustainable US economy without a great education system. Teach students to do the job right. You don't have an innovative economy unless you have a great education.

Walter Isaacson

In really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes, it strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good or evil the great occasions in a nation's history.

Walter Lippmann

From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.

Diane Wakoski

I hardly teach. It's more like a gathering of minds looking at one subject and learning from each other. I enjoy the process.

Fay Godwin

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends up blocking his retreat.

Oscar Wilde

All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.

Jodi Picoult

I shoot the Hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum, because if I use the leaden one his hide is sure to flatten em.

Hilaire Belloc