Of course a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.

On the other side I do believe that the rhetoric we are seeing from the Democrats today is unprecedented is a new low in presidential politics and goes beyond political discourse and amounts to political hate speech.

I think that what I'm doing is right. And election-year politics which intensifies everything is not going to drive me off that course.

I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy with kings queens dukes and court politics but of course like what I was explaining before about making the science make sense you have to make the politics make sense too.

Of course there are regrets. I shall regret always that I found my own authentic voice in politics. I was too conservative too conventional. Too safe too often. Too defensive. Too reactive. Later too often on the back foot.

We need to dig deep and give people a reason to be optimistic just as Obama is doing in America. Because in the same way that outcome of the U.S. elections will change the course of events there and around the world so too do politics here in Britain.

One of the big changes in politics has been because families individuals have felt worried insecure... worried about the economy worried about their jobs worried about their kids' futures... actually the disconnect between the public and media discourse and people's everyday concerns has become bigger not smaller.

Why does it have to be politics? Is there a dynamism to that world and a theoretical capacity to do things that draws many talented people? Absolutely. Are there other ways to be involved and lead an interesting life? Of course.

One lesson you better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never go out on a golf course and beat the President.

Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important.

But at the beginning it was clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This was my idea but of course I never really much got the chance to do it.

Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire even though the desire be unconscious intensity of life or completeness of experience the universality of its appeal is a matter of course.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems I would suggest you do two things: first while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

I love painting and music of course. I don't know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. I've certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it and I didn't read it until I was in my late 20s.

A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry unless of course the life has been made into an art.

All those authors there most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side that's the prose side that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it when we see it but we can't define it.