What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

Well, with the French language, which I understood and spoke, however imperfectly, and read in great quantities, at certain times, the matter I suppose was slightly different from either Latin or Greek.

I think it was lucky that during most of the work on the Odyssey I lived on Homer's sea in houses that were, in one case, shaken by the impact of the Mediterranean winter storms on the rocks below.

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not?

Of course the other and more serious way in which it all happens is that one finds in poems and language some quality one appropriates for oneself and wishes to reproduce.

I think there are perhaps two ways in which one can begin.

Well, maybe so, although I don't think I am particularly gifted in languages. In fact, oddly enough, it may have something to do with my being slow at languages.

Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

Is encouragement what the poet needs? Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact, quite a few of them need more discouragement, the most discouragement possible.

In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

One should indeed read Pope with his notes available, in the Twickenham edition possibly, to see what a vast amount he did understand about Homer.

The heart of the matter seems to me to be the direct interaction between one's making a poem in English and a poem in the language that one understands and values. I don't see how you can do it otherwise.

I think that everyone who took part has always been grateful for it.

Homer's whole language, the language in which he lived, the language that he breathed, because he never saw it, or certainly those who formed his tradition never saw it, in characters on the pages. It was all on the tongue and in the ear.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

That helped me to keep in touch with myself and to keep in touch with this really quite extraordinary language and literature into which I had pushed a little way.

The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.

There must of course be a relationship between translating and making poems of your own, but what it is I just don't know.

Words began to appear in English and to make some kind of equivalent. For what satisfaction it is hard to say, except that something seems unusually piercing, living, handsome, in another language, and since English is yours, you wish it to be there too.

Yes, living voices in a living language, so it seemed to us.

I would then go on to say that Homer, as we now know, was working in what they call an oral tradition.

What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

Now, the language that had grown up and formed itself on those principles is what one is dealing with, and the problem is to bring a work of art in that medium into another medium formed on different principles and heard and understood in a different way.

Is encouragement what the poet needs Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact quite a few of them need more discouragement the most discouragement possible.

Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. Your dreams of creating a dry-cleaning empire won't be helped by knowing that Thomas Edison liked to take naps.

Sugar is like a drug. If I have one bite, I need to eat it all. I can eat an entire panettone in one sitting.

I've always suffered from being labelled a horror writer - just because I didn't go to university, just because I still talk in my natural voice, just because I'm not as articulate as Martin Amis.

Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

I'm quite careful. I like to buy nice things for myself, but I like to also be reasonable. I think I'm pretty careful.

I have to be on such a strict diet constantly.

I like performing in front of big crowds.

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.

Every morning you have two choices: continue to sleep with your dreams, or wake up and chase them.

I think that Vietnam, many of us who served in Vietnam thought that was very wasteful, and to what end? To what end? What were we really there for? What were we really fighting for?

I always wanted to play against the best.

Drink today and drown all sorrow You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow Best while you have it use your breath There is no drinking after death.

Certain readers resented me when they could no longer recognize their territory, their institution.

There are no disappointments, just challenges.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

If gender is on a spectrum, where one finds oneself is completely unique.

Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.

The secret of having a personal life is not answering too many questions about it.

Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.

Persuade thyself that imperfection and inconvenience are the natural lot of mortals, and there will be no room for discontent, neither for despair.

If you can turn off certain categories of law, do you not also have the power to turn off all categories of law?

The ordinary man is involved in action the hero acts. An immense difference.

I wont promise to be always here for you but I assure you that Christ will always be here for you. But Ill always be holding your hand in mine.

I'm always more comfortable and in a good place when I'm with friends because I know they trust me. I'm able to get great performances from people who trust me.