"My father, my father, o can you not trace  The elf-king's daughters in that gloomy place?"  "My son, my son, I see it clear  How grey the ancient willows appear."

Who's riding so late where winds blow wild  It is the father grasping his child;  He holds the boy embraced in his arm,  He clasps him snugly, he keeps him warm.

"My son, why cover your face in such fear?"  "You see the elf-king, father?  He's near! The king of the elves with crown and train!"  "My son, the mist is on the plain."

'Sweet lad, o come and join me, do!  Such pretty games I will play with you;  On the shore gay flowers their color unfold,  My mother has many garments of gold.'

"My father, my father, and can you not hear  The promise the elf-king breathes in my ear?"  "Be calm, stay calm, my child, lie low:  In withered leaves the night-winds blow."

'Will you, sweet lad, come along with me?  My daughters shall care for you tenderly;  In the night my daughters their revelry keep,  They'll rock you and dance you and sing you to sleep.'

'I love you, your comeliness charms me, my boy!  And if you're not willing, my force I'll employ.'  "Now father, now father, he's seizing my arm.  Elf-king has done me a cruel harm."

The father shudders, his ride is wild,  In his arms he's holding the groaning child,  Reaches the court with toil and dread. -  The child he held in his arms was dead.

This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

I've been truly overwhelmed by the good luck messages I have received from the rugby world and the fantastic support I've had from my friends, family, my team-mates and staff at Cardiff Blues and the WRU throughout my treatment. It has meant a huge amount to me.

This is a day of little faith - of few convictions - a day when men seem to have no great causes and no great passions. So in frustration, in disappointment, they are inclined to say, 'You can't change human nature.' It is true that we cannot change human nature. But God can.

Denial can be a pathology or a survival mechanism and sometimes its both.

A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis.

I feel a terrifically painful disturbance in the natural law of things between men and women that must be balanced in the next few thousand years. What has been done in the name of holding up masculine energy as God and feminine energy as subservient has really wiped out everything.

On 15 July 2007, I swam across an open patch of sea at the North Pole to highlight the melting of the Arctic sea ice.

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

I give my grandfather, Dr Harold Young, a forestry Professor at the University of Maine, full credit for my career path. He pioneered the use of aerial photography in forestry in the 1950s, and we think he worked as a spy for the CIA during the Cold War, mapping Russian installations.

Nobody can tell you how to be a good wife or husband.

When I was driving home after registration, I heard this song on the radio, a guy singing about not ever going to class in college and always hanging out and singing for his friends. I laughed and said, I can relate, because it was so much like me. I realized right then I would pull out of school and pursue a music career.

It was part of your religion to hate the British.

I enjoy ritual and ceremony. What I don't like is when it's badly done or sloppily done. This is actually a theological issue - the forms we adopt, the actions we take, the way we do things, are, as it were, a sacrament.

For me, the past is dead. Can't go back.

I have been an unabashed fan of NPR for many years, and have stolen untold excellent ideas from its programming.

I like things to have rules, I like order and I like schedules.

Learning how to keep track of inventory and cash flow and creating an income statement and a balance sheet are great skills to learn for managing existing businesses.

The theory has to be interpreted that extra dimensions beyond the ordinary four dimensions the three spatial dimensions plus time are sufficiently small that they haven't been observed yet.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don't know if I want to be that guy.

When I do my own books, I take it as more of my own confessional, but when I illustrate for other people, it is intriguing because I feel like I shouldn't be stepping too much into the limelight. It's like playing the piano while someone else is singing.

Robust activity on one site is so much better than halfhearted activity on multiple sites.

I'm trying to have everything that I put into the world be something that makes a difference in the way I want to make a difference.

I don't really try to get involved politically by giving money to politicians or by saying I'm a Democrat or Republican. Right now, I just view myself as an American.

When I graduated from law school in 1959, there wasn't a single woman on any federal bench. It wouldn't be a realistic ambition for a woman to want to become a federal judge. It wasn't realistic until Jimmy Carter became our president.