Few people want the pleasures they are free to take.

My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope.

A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.

Quarrels are the dowry which married folk bring one another.

Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.

Make the workmanship surpass the materials.

Love is no assignment for cowards.

Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.

The man who has experienced shipwreck shudders even at a calm sea.

Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.

If you want to be loved, be lovable.

Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost.

Thatcher set ordinary people free, but into a landscape that her other policies had already shaped to suit other, more powerful interests, such as large corporations or Britons with inherited wealth.

We don't make glamorous movies today. Everything now is very realistic, artistic - and depressing. When is the last time you you saw a wonderful musical or a fabulous fantasy?

If we're really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what's causing us to do what we do.

It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.

Gabriel's voice can reach me anywhere. Even in a hurricane.

The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought.

Dancing and singing were always like games to me. I sang constantly.

The majority of my work is about preparation.

I've been doing American auditions for a while, and it always felt sort of like sending these audition tapes off into the ether. So just hearing anything back from anyone was kind of startling.