By the sense of mystery I understand the experience of certain places and times when one's whole nature seems to be in touch with a presence, a genius loci, a potency.

A little common sense, goodwill, and a tiny dose of unselfishness could make this goodly earth into an earthly paradise.

All nations teach their children to be "patriotic", and abuse the other nations for fostering nationalism.

Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility.

Cats are like donkeys and camels, they won't ever quite give in to human tyranny, they won't try to imitate the human soul.

I dream of silent verses where the rhyme glides noiseless as an oar.

Such shame is not even skin deep. And as to forgetting, surely, you know that is Woman's First and Greatest Art?

No man who has managed to keep out of an office can be called a failure in life.

At night, the moon, a pregnant woman, walks cautiously over the slippery heavens.

Millions of human vermin swarm sweating along the night-arched cavernous roads. (Happily rapid chemical processes will disintegrate them all.

How on earth did it come about that all the things denounced in the Gospels are violently defended by the Christian sects?

We never fight for the leader, We fight for the leader's cause.

Norman is a very up-close, personal, character drama and I'd like to do something more zoomed out, a little more pastoral, some sweeping epic. I'd like to try something different.

Whenever I get depressed, I raise my hemlines. If things don't change, I am bound to be arrested.

The fact that Brazil and Chile now has China as their largest trading partner means the Monroe Doctrine is certainly something of the past.

Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.

Changi for me - of course it's easy to be wise after the event, and to discuss it cleverly after the event - was about as near as you can get to being dead and still be alive.

Don [ Handfield] was actually one of the first guys I met in town back in '94. He was an actor and a writer and all this stuff.

Advice is very easy to give, and even easier not to follow, so I don't fool with it.

If heat rises, then heaven must be hotter than hell

People have doubted me and criticized me my whole life, and that's why I'm the way I am.