Contradictory to my religion I think is journalism.

As I have pointed out it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer but art is very self-referential whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

Violence against women in all its forms is a human rights violation. It's not something that any culture religion or tradition propagates.

In the traditional urban novel there is only survival or not. The suburban idea the conformist idea that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life but it is not a cure. Same with religion.

It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you later not a lesser but a greater thing.

The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity.

Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.

I was always in trouble from an early age. I had a fraught relationship with my parents who were very traditional. Doing plays at school was a joyous release.

Whatever your relationship is to your sacred tradition in the West you have some relationship to the Bible if only through the names of the characters.

For decades Japan has been a friend and reliable trading partner with the United States and I anticipate that relationship will prosper.

Everything Sholom Aleichem talks about in his plays and his short stories is about people family man's relationship with his God the breaking down of tradition.

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them.

Washington State has a strong tradition of a positive relationship - positive working relationship between labor and management whether in the private sector or the public sector. It needs to continue to be that way.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Poetry especially traditional Iranian poetry is very good at looking at things from a number of different angles simultaneously.

I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written.

Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.

I wanted to reimagine the role in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents events preoccupations and to spend a great deal of time going to schools trying to demystify poetry.

Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether the trick they miss is that being called this thing with the weight of tradition behind it and with the association of the Royal family does allow you to have conversations and to open doors and wallets for the good of poetry in a way that nothing else would allow.

Traditional matter must be glorified since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things the listeners we must remember needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.

When I was in college I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.