All writers are to some extent inventors, describing people as they would like to see them in life.

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue.

One reads for oneself and for strangers.

Originality must compound with inheritance.

The aesthetic and the agonistic are one, according to the ancient Greeks.

The inventor knows HOW to borrow.

Persuasion is a strong but subdued outrider.

King die hard, in Shakespeare and in life.

Shakespeare's exquisite imagining belies our total inability to live in the present moment.

Reviewing bad books is bad for the character – WH Auden

How little we know the ones we love. How little we know of anyone, in the end.

His hand cupped her cheek as he lowered his head to hers. Just before their lips touched, a light knock sounded on the door.

Everything. Everywhere. Every moment. That is the scope of God's call on our lives, and that is the dignity our lives enjoy.

I believe that life is basically a process of growth-that we go through many lives, choosing those situations and problems that we will learn through.

I spent my days on the riverbanks, in the woods, in the fields, shooting, hunting and stalking. I unravelled everything within my life. Self discovery is most important to me.

Treat unhappiness as a defect and fewer would embrace it.

The reality is Hicks is facing an unfair justice system that is not tolerated anywhere else in the world, so where does that leave him

My job is to score goals.

I don't want anybody to panic. I'm not pitching. I'm just throwing out the first ball.

Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.