In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.

During my time as a political strategist, one of the most vexing problems was figuring out why so many people vote against their perceived interests.

Many of our advances in science and technology were seeded through government.

The Secret Agent,' Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel about an anarchist plot to blow up the Royal Observatory at Greenwich - in fact, a scheme by a secret police agent to stir up a government backlash - has acquired a kind of cult status as the classic novel for the post-9/11 age.

Too many people, because they were white and poor, black and rich, or just plain busy with something other than politics, have felt they had no voice in our government.