No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, we can join him there.

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.

What’s gotten into you?” he wondered, blinking in sudden frustration.“Not you, that’s for a certainty.

Welcome the hidden messages in pain.

Its a mathematical fact that two negatives make a positive so even under adverse circumstances think positively.

Maybe next time you'll take me up on dinner." "I doubt it, Mr. Holbrook. I'm pretty sure hell will freeze over first." Again he smiled. "Well, that may be happening sooner than you think, my dear.

Everyone's light turns on at their own time.

In spite of the poor economy, almost 70 percent of Americans occasionally splurge on luxury items -- like a blanket on a plane, or a peanut.

Your attitude determines your actions, and your actions determine your accomplishment.

Microsoft's philosophy is to get it out there and fix it later. Steve [Jobs] would never do that. He doesn't get anything out there until it is perfected.

I didn't come to stay. I came to make a difference.

It used to be you rose up through the ranks, and by the time you got a job as a boss, you had done the work of everybody beneath you.