While President, I have been President - emphatically.
I do not want to be bored listening to music that is muffled and known only to the poet himself.
We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it.
When you love someone, that love has no limit, no measure, because you know in your deepest being that when that love demands sacrifice, you will give it without question. You will not look for reasons, for justification - the act of giving, of sacrificing, is a natural compulsion, like breathing, and it will, in the end, surprise you because you did it without second thoughts.
No man stops caring as long as he breathes. As long as he has a mind and memory, he will care. This is what separates us from the animals. We have feelings.
Time will come that all that we love, we will eventually lose, and all that we hate we will eventually face.
We compromise ourselves the day we are born. If we are looking for the original sin, there it is- our incapacity to live honestly with ourselves because we are human, because we are shackled by custom, by obligations and we accept compromise only in the light of our conscience, answerable as we are only to ourselves.
When I came back, I wasn't looking past this year. This is a bonus for me. I just wish it would have turned out a little better, but we all don't get what we want all the time.
The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. “I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.
I am a president who also gives pardons. Usually my considerations are humane.
Pretty much I don't regret anything that has happened in my life. One thing is I wish I could have spent more time with my mama and my pa.