There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

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.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written.

I work on words mostly toward them being poetry or short stories and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well and it's an ongoing creative assignment.

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.

Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones gut this is only in part true.

I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry but film writing brilliant film writing is a talent - you can't just do it like that.

When I was in college I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.

As an actor there is room for a certain amount of creativity but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina skill or ability to write a novel but I'd love to write short stories and poetry because those are my two passions.

The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call but I wrote letters I wrote short stories I wrote books.

When I look back on my childhood I think of that short time in Beirut. I know that seeing the city collapse around me forced me to grasp something many people miss: the fragility of peace.

If there are finer beings than German short hairs I don't know what they are. In their eyes is peace.

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

It is strange that the years teach us patience that the shorter our time the greater our capacity for waiting.

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.