Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.

In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

To make one, there must be two.

Those who hate to go to bed fear death; those who hate to get up fear life.

It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.