Poems List

Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.

Many people would be more truthful were it not for their uncontrollable desire to talk.

Men as well as animals do whatever makes them happy, differences lie in what makes them happy.

The average man's judgment is so poor, he runs a risk every time he uses it.

[He] did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure that everybody got out. He walked the plane twice after everybody else was off and tried to verify that there was nobody else onboard, and he ... made sure that there was nobody behind him.

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.

The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to everybody and still nobody likes him.

..look at the ball of fire!

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

“Most talented with a God given talent for weaving words of heartfelt wonder.”

As an author I found it fascinating interviewing luminaries of the jazz world for over 15 years, beginning with a phone call from Red Rodney on a Thanksgiving Day in 1989 and then a phone call from Stan Getz on Christmas Day; their comments set in motion the quest to write a book about my first husband, Al Haig, the chosen pianist of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie (who gave me the moniker 'Lady Haig' one blustery cold night outside of Birdland on a January night) - and later Stan Getz.”

Become the change you want to see - those are words I live by.

It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.

Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politick. Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.

All we actually have is our body and its muscles that allow us to be under our own power.

Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga -- stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil --or else an absolute ignorance.

In order to find a good quotation in a dictionary of humorous quotations, I didn't leave any stone unturned.

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.

If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the U. S. A. , I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.

It is easy to be tolerant of the principles of other people if you have none of your own.

A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.