So the poet who wants to be something that he cannot be and is a failure in plain life makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.

Foreign aid is neither a failure nor a panacea. It is instead an important tool of American policy that can serve the interests of the United States and the world if wisely administered.

As long as the G.O.P. led by its increasingly visible women continues to insist that the problem is not their policies but women's failure to understand their own lives and interests the gender gap won't go away.

The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.

There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men kindness and generosity openness honesty understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest sharpness greed acquisitiveness meanness egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

I had the closest thing I have ever had to an out-of-body experience lying in bed one morning. I turned on the 'Today' programme and item four on the news was: 'The shadow chancellor has ruled himself out of the leadership.' I lay there thinking that's interesting then I realised it was me.

I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort of chipping flint of cultures rubbing against each other. And living on the border between Mexico and the U.S. for so many years gave me a lot of insight into that.

I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience what goes on inside someone's head that being all they really know of the world.