Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

On July 26 1916 I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat a sense of wrong a homesickness a lovesickness.

Wars begin in the minds of men and in those minds love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace.

You can only end a negotiation for peace if you begin it.

You know I said in the U.N. I said to President Abbas 'Look we're in the same city we're in the same building for God's sake the U.N. Let's just sit down and begin to talk peace.'

The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. So we must never neglect any work of peace within our reach however small.

If we are to teach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war we shall have to begin with the children.

To attain inner peace you must actually give your life not just your possessions. When you at last give your life - bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live then and only then can you begin to find inner peace.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

Peace begins with a smile.

I'd love to go back to Europe in the '20s and '30s for the beginning of the Psychoanalytic Movement and Freud and Jung and all that was going on with discoveries in quantum physics. The whole nature of reality was changing and being challenged.

In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking on a tightrope.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves and the last which dies.

We forget that this music music made by my brothers and sisters is still a baby. It's just beginning. When I think of the possibilities it makes me smile.

Half the time I feel like I'm appealing to the downer freaks out there. We start to play one downer record after another until I begin to get down myself. Give me something from 1960 or something let me get up again. The music of today is for downer freaks and I'm an upper.