Pastoral Resources

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.

I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.

When I got political that blew our marriage out of the water. I was not the same person and I admit that.

Anything well written with good language and clarity and honesty is worth doing. It comes out of the same tradition as Shakespeare.

With honesty of purpose, balance, a respect for tradition, courage, and, above all, a philosophy of life, any young person who embraces the historical profession will find it rich in rewards and durable in satisfaction.

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

No candidate can win a presidential race advocating gay marriage and opposing the military action in Iraq.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

I like marriage. The idea.

When you're buying real growth and want real performance, you buy excellent management and good products and you diversify across industry sectors.

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

Lack of encouragement never deterred me. I was the kind of person who would not be put down.

The Porto players were with me for two and a half years, they believed in me, in my methods, in the way we do it. The next day I go and a manager arrives who works completely differently.

I followed an Italian manager and it cannot be easy when you follow a manager who thinks very differently.

I was nine or 10 years old and my father was sacked on Christmas Day. He was a manager, the results had not been good, he lost a game on December 22 or 23. On Christmas Day, the telephone rang and he was sacked in the middle of our lunch.