My parents are artists in their world in the world of modern artists you are supposed to just go into your studio and tune everything out and your entire relationship with your work is supposed to be a super private one. That was the way to do it and you weren't deeply truly artistic if that wasn't the way you were engaging the press.

I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame but probably only for this reason that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

But I think there was a sense amongst the House Republicans especially that we didn't just want to be opposed to Bill Clinton that we wanted to tell the country what we were for and to brand ourselves in a more positive manner.

I had never had a positive leading character - somebody that wasn't an antihero or who wasn't more of a guy that you're supposed to be on the side of.

I'm a big cockeyed optimist. I try to accentuate the positive as opposed to the negative.

I was supposed to be women's lib and now I'd exceeded it and gone over into international politics.

You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain.

Whatever your supposed politics are - left right - if you put it in a human connection most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way.

The enemy is not just terrorism. It is the threat posed specifically by Islamist terrorism by Bin Ladin and others who draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion and distorts both.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

If a politician murders his mother the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.

All the president is is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

Because in fact women feminists do read my poetry and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care that's what poetry is supposed to do.

And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

This is probably why my life is easier and my family is very happy because we never lie each other. This is probably all people supposed to feel each other so be always in all of the world they'll be peace.

Are ideals confined to this deformed experiment upon a noble purpose tainted as it is with bargains and tied to a peace treaty which might have been disposed of long ago to the great benefit of the world if it had not been compelled to carry this rider on its back?

Hamas the opponents of Arafat the opponents of peace urged a boycott of the election and yet there was an 85 percent turnout where Hamas is supposed to be strong. Isn't that really quite incredible?

I am deeply concerned that without peace and a two-state solution the Jewish and democratic nature of Israel is in danger. That's why I have opposed Israel's settlement policy since 1973 and that's why I have favored a two-state solution since 1967.

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us.

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it.

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who says it.

What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.