Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)

Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs--no regular hours, so many temptations!

All my life I have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper - just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something'.

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings.

What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration.

I am overcome by my own amazing sloth...Can you please forgive me and believe that it is really because I want to do something well that I don't do it at all?

Sometimes it seemsas though only intelligent people are stupid enough to fall in love & only stupid people are intelligent enough to let themselves be loved.

All the untidyactivity continues, awful but cheerful.

Democracy in the contemporary world demands, among other things, an educated and informed people.

Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too?

...and the worse the memory, the stronger its stranglehold on the present.

The NFL is one of the few sports where it's possible to tear things down and start again.

I did my first film when I was in the final year of my graduation. At that time, I was still a kid, and I couldn't read the industry very well.

Eric Clapton is my dream guitarist.

The function of a leader within any institution: to provide that regulation through his or her non-anxious, self-defined presence.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.

I'm a novelist at heart. My sole intention is to write the best novel possible. I don't think about the film potential at all.

I am a great admirer of women.

I can't say that I've made the transition to movies.