Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols which observe him with familiar glances.

My friends are mostly familiar with music that plays on the mainstream radio.

Like anyone who goes to college you're leaving a familiar surrounding and a comfortable environment and your friends and everything and you're starting fresh. It can be pretty daunting.

I'm pretty horrible at relationships and haven't been in many long-term ones. Leaving and moving on - returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and autonomy - is what I know that feeling is as comfortable and comforting as it might be for a different kind of person to stay.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

In marriage there are no manners to keep up and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.

Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style to recognize the work of an artist or school to see or hear in new ways is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add.

I grew up listening to Jay-Z and I think the first time I really became obsessed with learning and thinking about lyrics was when I started listening to rap I was 11 12 and started becoming aware of music beyond the familiar.

I am involved with 'Write Girl ' which is such a great organization because they go into inner city schools and work with underprivileged girls to pair them up with other writers. And it gets them learning to express themselves and become familiar with their own voice. They have a 100% success ratio getting those girls into college.

Leadership is particularly necessary to ensure ready acceptance of the unfamiliar and that which is contrary to tradition.

It is after all the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

He surprised me by his familiarity with details of movements and battles which I did not suppose had come to his knowledge. As he kept me talking for over half an hour I flattered myself that what I had to say interested him.

Bobby Fischer has an enormous knowledge of chess and his familiarity with the chess literature of the USSR is immense.

We read deeply for varied reasons most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough that we need to know ourselves better that we require knowledge not just of self and others but of the way things are.