My mother's studies stopped with the third year of primary school my father with the first. They taught me a deep sense of duty. But nobody was involved in politics in my family.

I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy with kings queens dukes and court politics but of course like what I was explaining before about making the science make sense you have to make the politics make sense too.

When you come from desperate poverty and that's exactly what I come from you know that nonsenses are not to be tolerated. I'm not sure who gains from chaos but I know it's not the poor folks in the council flats. The politics of vindictiveness is never ever anything like a solution.

Rush Limbaugh we expect nonsense from him. But the Vatican that's another story. When the Vatican is so threatened that it launches attacks on nuns well you know what they say in politics a hit dog hollers.

Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics: I'd already been booed cheered cut sold traded and hung in effigy.

Would that the simple maxim that honesty is the best policy might be laid to heart that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.

I have got instincts that I think are very much in tune with people's very keen sense to see something different. I did not dream of being in politics since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I was not involved in student politics or not in that partisan way.

The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out do not vote or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse.

Politics is a profession a serious complicated and in its true sense a noble one.

For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous experiment in regarding one's own trade a sense of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not amiss.