"You need flawless balance on the recovery. You need white hot focus and the concentration to row square blades cleanly for seven miles. Smooth water doesn't hurt either."

“War is, we have been forced to admit, even in the face of its huge place in our civilization, an asocial trait.”

“I'm 37, please don't make me go to Brooklyn.”

“As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone—though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than other men—so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to the strength and purity of their desire.”

“As soon as I get bored, I start missing the kids, so I dont let myself get bored. I just go surfing.”

“Love' is finding the familiar dear. / 'In love' is to be taken by surprise.”

Source : Mona Van Duyn (2008). “Selected Poems”, p.189, Knopf

“Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for.”

“If you want to make a Conservative angry, tell him a lie. If you want to make a Liberal angry, tell him the truth.”

“In the polls, over 80% support the right to die and have done for the last 25 years. Even 80% of practising Catholics and Protestants support it, plus 76% of Church Times readers.”