Poetry and visions, springing as they do from an ever-present sense of mortality, might easily appear morbid to the sturdycommon sense of a burgher-class in the making.

A house with old furniture has no need of ghosts to be haunted.

Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief.

It shocked his sense of dramatic economy that they should have to resort to violence when the same result could have been obtained by a minimum expenditure of energy.

So fine a medicine is the will to action.

A bad conscience makes a very good ghost.

There had always been something rather brutal about (..._) common sense.

But these are sad times, the 'prentices wanting to be masters, and every little tradesman wanting to be a Senator, and every dirty little urchin thinking he can giveimpudence to his betters!

Let mental suffering be intense enough, and it becomes a sort of carminative.

Sentimentality is a quality that rarely has the slightest influence on action.

Mad folks are often as dangerous as bad ones.

The greatest law is: love yourself first

It wasn't like I felt I was on a wave. It was just so easy. It is only afterwards that I thought I really had a bit of good luck going on there with Yazoo.

My parents were music lovers and collectors. It was around.

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me.

If you make your heart into a weapon, you end up using it on yourself.

This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired.

I like Scottish people because they feel very true. They're always level and straight. They get a reputation for being hardened because of it, but I find them to be scrupulously honest people.

Well I don't think I've scored my life exclusively to Ray Charles.

On a personal level, just for me in my own work, I would say the most interesting thing has been getting to work with the people that I've worked with.