A poem conveys not a message so much as the provenance of a message, an advent of sense.

In an age where history is recorded on T-shirts, the very notion of dwelling on the deep structure of an experience has come to appear both arcane and archaic.

Unlike metaphor, metonymy does not try to fuse images together.

As witnesses that the things were not done in a corner.

To liberate words means first to shatter their function as vehicles of idea, memory, hope, or regret.

In recent decades this symbolic or metaphorical lyric has given way to one which leans toward metonymy.

Experience has ceded to a series of happenings, about which the most we can expect is information.

Most film directors do not come up with their own subjects or write their own screenplays.

No art form points like poetry to this originality of language as to its essential and abiding concern.

Other, far fewer, directors are more like the composer - conceptualizing the piece, scoring it, distributing its musical lines among a range of registers, chords, and instruments.

A poem conveys not a message so much as the provenance of a message, an advent of sense.

Still the question remains of what actually speaks in a poem, if not subjectivity as historically constructed.

A jacket commemorating the Germans as champions of the 1990 World Cup is out of date two weeks after the event has passed.

With the question of the effect of a poem, the topic of investigation shifts from that of textual autonomy to textual reception - to the issue of what we actually look for or find in reading a poem.

Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

I have met with some of them - very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools.

What we're doing is fun - if you have any sense of humor at all!

It was frightening because it was the first time I had gotten a sense of how serious the problem was. It became clear from his notes that he felt the president himself was involved.

Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.

You've got to have a sense of humor to keep your sanity.

My music is so often like a lullaby I write to myself to make sense of things I can't tie together, or things I've lost, or things I'll never have.

I am not this big celebrity, but it gets really crazy. You have to go through the nuts of blowing up, in a sense, and then figuring out how to live your life with that.

It's not so much the amount of tax we pay - it's the sense that our pocket's being picked without our knowing what's going on.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

I feel lazy when I'm not working. I learned all my business sense from my dad. He always believed in me, and I think the last thing he said to me before he passed away was, 'I know you're gonna be OK. I'm not worried about you'.

Reducing the budget for Amtrak makes no sense unless the Administration is prepared to implement a reform strategy which can be supported by the budget request.

By obtaining a sense of its place in the unfolding drama of life, set in an ecological theatre, so we can understand why it has become one of the leading players.

There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in.

Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work.

We suspect Dr. Clutterbuck's sense of hearing must be injured: for him the 'ear trumpet' magnifies but distorts sound, rendering it less distinct than before.

I think it is important to maintain a sense of self and confidence, not letting either falter for the sake of a particular part or project, no matter how great it might be.

But in a broader sense, when I have more control, I want to expose people to new ideas.

I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism.

If I were assigned poems I suppose I'd write more of them but it is entirely voluntary and for the most part ignored in the market sense of the word so the language to me is most intimate, most important, most sublime and most satisfying when it gets done.

But if you can create an honorable livelihood, where you take your skills and use them and you earn a living from it, it gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to balance your life the way you want.

We ought to be doing that with decent standard housing but if we have people who are absolutely on the streets in this case, I think it makes sense that tent cities are preferred to not having tent cities.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.

It's the sense of what family is at the dinner table. It was the joy of knowing mother was in the kitchen making our favorite dish. I wish more people would do this and recall the joy of life.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

Sexy at the millennium means having a solid sense of self but never taking yourself too seriously.

Acquiring a repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, so overwhelming, that the student with sense will devote all his energies to work and not imagine himself a martyr to art.