So I suppose poetry, language, the shaping of it, was and remains for me an effort to make sense out of essentially senseless situations.

One of the joys of writing historical fiction is the chance to read as much as you like on a pet subject - so much that you could easily bore your friends senseless on the topic.

I work tirelessly advocating for gun violence prevention and promoting common-sense gun laws that could spare other parents the pain of having their child taken by senseless gun violence - laws the NRA's leadership has fought against relentlessly.

Since we can't know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.

Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.

On July 18, we will mark the 12th anniversary of the senseless loss of 85 lives in the bombing of the Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

People have been on earth in our present form for only about 100,000 years, and in so many ways we're still ironing out our kinks. These turtles we've been traveling with, they outrank us in longevity, having earned three more zeros than we. They've got one hundred million years of success on their resume, and they've learned something about how to survive in the world. And this, I think, is part of it: they have settled upon peaceful career paths, with a stable rhythm. If humans could survive another one hundred million years, I expect we would no longer find ourselves riding bulls. It's not so much that I think animals have rights; it's more that I believe humans have hearts and minds- though I've yet to see consistent, convincing proof of either. Turtles may seem to lack sense, but they don't do senseless things. They're not terribly energetic, yet they do not waste energy? turtles cannot consider what might happen yet nothing turtles do threatens anyone's future. Turtles don't think about the next generation, but they risk and provide all they can to ensure that there will be one. Meanwhile, we profess to love our own offspring above all else, yet above all else it is they from whom we daily steal. We cannot learn to be more like turtles, but from turtles we could learn to be more human. That is the wisdom carried within one hundred million years of survival. What turtles could learn from us, I can't quite imagine.

You call forth the world which God has formed and that world only. Nor is this life of yours by which you set such store your doing, however you may choose to tell it. Its shape was forced in the void at the onset and all talk of what might otherwise have been is senseless for there is no otherwise. Of what could it be made? Where be hid? Or how make its appearance? The probability fo the actual is absolute. That we have no power to guess it out beforehand makes it no less certain. That we may imagine alternate histories means nothing at all.

The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most powerful and a senseless desire - the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment, and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important?

That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it smiles.

So I suppose poetry language the shaping of it was and remains for me an effort to make sense out of essentially senseless situations.

It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart.

Since we can't know what knowledge will be most needed in the future it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.

On July 18 we will mark the 12th anniversary of the senseless loss of 85 lives in the bombing of the Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires Argentina.