Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.

The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened.

Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept.

Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.

History is where tensions were.

Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.

It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.