"Words are delicate instruments: How to use them so that, after having read the poem, the taste remaining is not of the words themselves, but of a thought, a situation, a parallel reality? If not used appropriately, words in poetry are like the ugly remains of food after eating. What I mean is that readers will reject words if they don't serve to shift attention from themselves to somewhere else."

“Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”

Source : "Sunbeams: A Book of Quotations". Book edited by Sy Safransky, p. 42, 1990.

“If you’re not pissing someone off, you probably aren’t doing anything important.”

“As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship. Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long.”

“Our attainments [in space] are a major element in the competition between the Soviet system and our own . . . . in this sense, [they] are part of the battle along the fluid front of the cold war.”

“Without warning as a whirlwind swoops on an oak Love shakes my heart”

“News is not a game show. You don't win a car if you happen to be right.”

Source : "John Oliver Slams Media’s Edward Snowden Speculation: ‘Stop Guessing, News Is Not A Game Show’", www.huffingtonpost.com. June 25, 2013.

“My film is in French. It's not something folkloric. It's who we are. There's this tension about immigrants coming in. Will they learn French? Will they adapt? In this film, I'm on the reverse side because Monsieur Lazhar comes from a society where French is also the second language.”

“More and more people will now start realizing that we are actually equal to one another and that nobody will re-establish the balance or stability within this unless each and every one stands up.”