Generally I'm a pretty positive but like any other working person if the jobs aren't coming in I do get depressed.

Flexible working is not just for women with children. It is necessary at the other end of the scale. If people can move into part-time work instead of retirement then that will be a huge help. If people can fit their work around caring responsibilities for the elderly the disabled then again that's very positive.

No matter what you're going through there's a light at the end of the tunnel and it may seem hard to get to it but you can do it and just keep working towards it and you'll find the positive side of things.

The challenge in working in politics particularly if you're working for a political party is that everyone's a messenger.

And humility in politics means accepting that one party doesn't have all the answers recognising that working in partnership is progress not treachery.

When I first started working in politics as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access.

And inasmuch as the bridge is a symbol of all such poetry as I am interested in writing it is my present fancy that a year from now I'll be more contented working in an office than ever before.

That's a wonderful change that's taken place and so most poetry today is published if not directly by the person certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself working with his friends.

I've done a number of readings at poetry lounges in Vancouver and Los Angeles. I've compiled a book of poetry that's completed and two others I'm working on.

When you translate poetry in particular you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words sentences phrases the triple tension between the line of verse the syntax and the sentence.