Children are the proof we've been here . . . they're where we go to when we die. They're the best thing and the most impossible thing, but there's nothing else . . . Life is a riddle and they are the answer. If there's any answer, it has to be them.
What we call birth
Is but a beginning to be something else
Than what we were before; and when we cease
To be that something, then we call it death.
If they didn't call you a tough guy, then what else would they call you? Something worse than that? I'm playing parts, and if they call you that, it's because I played the part right.
The United States brags about its political system, but the President says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves.
Whereas if you were writing an op-ed piece or an essay, somebody would be asking, "What's your point?" With poetry you can stay in a moment for as long as you want. Poetry is about metaphor, about a thing standing in for something else. It's the thing that opens out to something else. What that something else is changes for readers. So what's on the page - it falls away.
In many campaigns, one candidate or another is asked to answer for comments he or she made in the past. The answer is usually gibberish - 'That was a long time ago,' or 'I was trying to say something else.'
The Theory of Groups is a branch of mathematics in which one does something to something and then compares the result with the result obtained from doing the same thing to something else, or something else to the same thing.
Does the imam have a legal right to build the mosque at Ground Zero? The answer is yes. But is it the right thing to do? The answer is no. And most Americans, and most moderate Muslims, join with me in that call.
Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.
Love is the only thing that makes the world spin around, I think. It's weird. We have to call it "love," because we have to call it something, but it's not a word. It's an energy. It's an act. It's an action. It's a natural thing.
Don't like flag-burning? Fine. Hate flag-burning? Me too! The thing is, though, hating something doesn't always mean that the answer is to call on government powers to ban it - and, in fact, I'd say that that is rarely the best solution, especially when it comes to speech.
If you're never called, then you don't know any better. If you are called and don't answer the call, then that is the most difficult and painful. If you are called and do answer the call, it is the adventure of your life.
What's really going on is, on your iPhone, you have 200 apps, and they're all collecting a little data on you. Twitter knows a certain thing, Foursquare knows something else, my Fitbit app knows something else, my Waze app knows something else.
A thing chosen always as an end and never as a means we call absolutely final. Now happiness above all else appears to be absolutely final in this sense, since we always choose it for its own sake and never as a means to something else.
Prioritization sounds like such a simple thing, but true prioritization starts with a very difficult question to answer, especially at a company with a portfolio approach: If you could only do one thing, what would it be? And you can't rationalize the answer, and you can't attach the one thing to some other things. It's just the one thing.
An artist's failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging one thing he conforms something else, even if at the time he does not know what that something else is.