In 1600, when Shakespeares audience at the Globe heard Hamlet for the first time, every one of them knew very well what it meant to be handed a cup of wine by a figure of authority and told to drink.

From the point where our ancestors started making tools, people have been unable to survive without the things they make; in this sense, it is making things that makes us human.

For many, the icon of the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone, that administrative by-product of the Greek imperial adventure in Africa.

Objects let you tell a narrative that encompasses everybody. Texts don't.

For a million years the sound of making handaxes provided the percussion of everyday life. Anyone choosing a hundred objects to tell a history of the world would have to include a handaxe.

[The Persian Empire] left a dream of the Middle East as a unit, and a unit where people of different faiths could live together.

Objects are better than text at conveying narrative

In the world of the Middle East at the moment, the debates are shrill. But ... the wisest voice of all of them may well be the voice of this mute thing, the Cyrus cylinder.

I have never been a violent man. Just a little creepy, it seems.

The greatest please in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

When libertarian sentiments take a populist form, it looks like this: a mix of anger, fear, anti-intellectualism, and fierce government hostility. Welcome to the Tea Party movement.

Sam Turton is the true embodiment of the responsible artist. The honesty and integrity of the man comes out with every soulful note he sings.

There is one safe and happy place, and that is in the will of God.

It's always good in science to say "Well how do you know that?" and "Are you really sure?" and "Could there be an exceptional case?"

I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?

Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?

I fear other actors who are not prepared. And I fear directors who are afraid.

Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery: nothing else holds fashion.