Perhaps he was a fool, but he thought that if a work were truly great you would only have to read it once and you would be stolen from yourself, desperately moved, changed forever.

He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.

Words were all he knew; they possessed and overwhelmed him, as if they were a thousand white cats with whom he shared a one-room apartment.

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

One is attracted to beauty. Beauty is the coordination of things, in such a way, that it is what attracts you. It's almost self-defining.

The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.

They gave themselves up to the stars the way swimmers can surrender to the waves, and the stars took them without resistance.

And if you were a spirit, and time did not bind you, and patience and love were all you knew, then there you would wait for someone to return, and the story to unfold.

If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.

Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor.

And how does God speak to you?" "In the language of everything that is beautiful.

Getting married is like trading in the adoration of many for the sarcasm of one.

Phrases like 'the team spirit' are always employed to cut across individualism, love and personal loyalties.

The shadow proves the sunshine.

I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.

If you want to see the big stuff that God has, you've got to take some risk and trust only in the Gospel.

I write songs from the heart, and I don't hold back.

We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened.

I don't consider myself a person of fashion because it's too sophisticated. My thing is I look at style like swagger. I like things that pull me, that I gravitate to.

Don't follow those who talk, follow those who do.

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.