I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.

The English can laugh and at the same time strike you down, without the least compunction. It is the secret of their success as a nation.

I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my cockney accent.

There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive for action or change.

You don't have to be brought up in a grand house to have a sense of the past, and I truly believe that there are certain people to whom or through whom the territory - the place, the past - speaks.

I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.

Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

The endless chatter of this journey had wearied me.

Yes, I have inherited the past because I have acknowledged it at last? And, now that I have come to understand it, I no longer need to look back.

I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned.

One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Old soul cries through the tears of a newborn

In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth.

Let your tears fall because of sin, but, at the same time, let the eye of faith steadily behold the Son of man.

That's what civilization sometimes did to threats, real or perceived. They walled them off. Us against them. Survival of the fittest. You die so I can live.

Today is tax day. A lot of people are hoping they get refunds. And that's just the folks here in the audience.

I keep reading between the lies.

I said I'd be honest, I never said I'd be consistant.

I saw a great bumper sticker that read: 'Do something that scares you every day.' That really stuck with me. I try to live like that.

I don't know what's wrong with that girl.