If you have an important point to make don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.

Study how water flows in a valley stream smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains rivers plants and trees - should be your teacher.

Rivers ponds lakes and streams - they all have different names but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths.

Television is much better crafted today then in the 70s. The content is less positive but I'm one of those that feel our entertainment reflects our world it's not a driver - art imitates life.

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

There's one of my new poems actually - is a good example of where my poetry has ended up. My earlier river poetry was more like a cross between Shelley and Dylan Thomas.

I grew up in this town my poetry was born between the hill and the river it took its voice from the rain and like the timber it steeped itself in the forests.

A man's country is not a certain area of land of mountains rivers and woods but it is a principle and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine though I have not quarrelled with him?

Having contemplated this admirable grove I proceeded towards the shrubberies on the banks of the river and though it was now late in December the aromatic groves appeared in full bloom.