The memory of my father is wrapped up in white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day of work. Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits out of his hat, he drew love from his small body.

Knowledge of peace passes from country to country, like children's games, which are so much alike, everywhere.

I've often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.

I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.

From the place where we are right, flowers will not grow in the spring.

Tonight I think again of many days that are sacrificed for one night of love. Of the waste and the fruit of the waste, of plenty and of fire. And how painlessly-time.

I’ve never been in those places where I’ve never been and never will be, I have no share in the infinity of light-years and dark-years, but the darkness is mine, and the light, and my time is my own.