Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight

I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.

New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.

What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.

What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.

You found me under the thousand stars, shining above us at the night. You found me and you wanted me to shine for you.

I don't have to live that way anymore

From the FA to UEFA and FIFA, there's a naivety, a lack of knowledge and understanding and packed with people who are out of touch.

We need a sense of the value of time - that is, of the best way to divide one's time into one's various activities.

Society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.

You know very well that whether you are on page one or page thirty depends on whether they fear you. It's as simple as that.

Exactly how intricate a sport is jogging? You were two years old. You ran after the cat. You pretty much had it mastered

I was, it was very high. Especially with international (box office), we did something that I didn't think this movie ["2012"] would do. I was very happy.

To picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong.