American Quotes

I think we will always have the impulse towards visual poetry with us, and I wouldn't agree with Bly that it's a bad thing. It depends on the ability of the individual poet to do it well, and to make a shape which is interesting enough to hold your attention.

I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.

I think there is a great difference, in that when the poet is reading you get the whole personality of the person, especially if he's a good reader. Whereas a person just sitting gets what he puts into it.

I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian.

I think that concrete poetry seems to have, as far as I can see, come to a kind of a dead end. It doesn't seem to be going any further than it went in its high period of about five or six years ago.

I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets.

I think most people read and re-read the things that they have liked. That's certainly true in my case. I re-read Pound a great deal, I re-read Williams, I re-read Thomas, I re-read the people whom I cam to love when I was at what you might call a formative stage.

I do read everything that we publish. We usually have to have two or three votes for a book before we take it on. So in that sense I suppose it is an orchestra.

Every now and then, I strike something that just goes click, you know, in my head. As Gertrude Stein used to say, it rings the bell, and I feel, this is great.

Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going.

When people start to write articles about what might be wrong with the 'Today' show you know where you should point the finger, point it at me because I have been there the longest. And it's my responsibility.

Times are harder there right now. I think it's been well publicized. We are - the show is not where I want it to be right now. The ratings are not where I want them to be. I want to make it better.

The Iraqis have once again failed to meet a deadline for a final draft of the constitution.

Not a lot of conservatives on this list. Are more liberals than conservatives screwing up America?

My dad was Jewish. My mom is not. So I was not raised anything.

I get letters from women, and they say, 'I love your Roman nose.' If I weren't on TV and I walked past that same woman, she'd go, 'Did you see the beak on that guy?

It usually takes two people a little while to learn where the funny buttons are and testy buttons are.

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can't remember what they are.

When you stop talking, you've lost your customer. When you turn your back, you've lost her.

If you don't sell, it's not the product that's wrong, it's you.

Look for a sweet person. Forget rich.

There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them works.

Nobody should hit .200. Anybody should hit .250.

When contrasted with the much longer time that life has been present, the course of Christianity thus far is but a brief moment.

We must, however, note that what are usually called the high religions made their appearance within about twenty-five hundred years - most of them within fifteen hundred years.

We know something of the history of the spread of Christianity, but much passed from recorded memory and much was transmitted by tradition whose accuracy has been repeatedly questioned.

This means that to man God gave a degree of free will.

The Psalms, the anthology of the hymns of Israel, are still used by Christians.

The prophets and the writers of the Psalms were clear that God was continuing to work in the universe and in all history. They declared that He had created the universe.

The primary source of the appeal of Christianity was Jesus - His incarnation, His life, His crucifixion, and His resurrection.