Bill Clinton sitting on Air Force One getting his hair cut while people around the country cooled their heels and waited for him became a metaphor for a populist president who had gotten drunk with the perks of his own power and was sort of you know not sensitive to what people wanted.

But in fact if you look at film as a metaphor only through the negative can you have the positive print. What I'm trying to get to is the positive value of negation.

Poetry teaches us music metaphor condensation and specificity.

A poem in form still has to have voice gesture a sense of discovery a metaphoric connection as any poetry does.

All slang is metaphor and all metaphor is poetry.

Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

Religious speech is extreme emotional and motivational. It is anti-literal relying on metaphor allusion and other rhetorical devices and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers.

Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.

Many smart folks seem to think that if you just get your metaphors and messages right you'll win. That if you start describing what you favor as a 'moral value' - 'affordable health care is a moral value' etc. - then you'll appeal to red-state voters.

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.