I learned a good deal about economics and about America from the author of the Reagan tax reforms - the great Jack Kemp. What gave Jack that incredible enthusiasm was his belief in the possibilities of free people in the power of free enterprise and strong communities to overcome poverty and despair. We need that same optimism right now.

The nature of catastrophe is after all reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins destroys wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event - not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics - then it somehow puts the ruination into a much more positive light.

We've certainly learned a lot of lessons from Katrina from Rita. Rita was better than Katrina. We're doing a better job planning. We're closer - more closely aligned with the Department of Defense. These things would be positive things if we were to have another attack.

I can walk into a room and create a good ambience. I was taught all about this back when I studied acting. One of the things they would teach you is how to send out positive signals when you enter a room. I am glad I learned this.

The thing about American politics as I've learned is there is no choice.

One thing I have learned in my time in politics is that if one of the parties is shameless the other party cannot afford to be spineless.

We read too much Shakespeare at school and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama in which an impatient crown prince frets at his long subordination and begins to scheme for the throne he knows he merits was promised and has earned.

I'm not an old experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Short fiction is the medium I love the most because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that though lacking a novel's length satisfies the reader.

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry all that he has learned about poetry is only a partial assurance.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

However I learned something. I thought that if the young person the student has poetry in him or her to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching I think.

My parents were very permissive when it came to animals. As long as we earned the money to buy them and built whatever structure it was they were going to live in we could have any kind of pet we wanted. They would have let us have a rhinoceros if we could have afforded it.

War is not the quintessential emergency in which man has to prove himself as my generation learned at its school desks in the days of the Kaiser rather peace is the emergency in which we all have to prove ourselves.