Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.

Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.

God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.

Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

I don't need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I already know I'm wrong; I need a Church to tell me I'm wrong where I think I'm right

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

A really great person is the person who makes every person feel great.

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.

But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticise the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.

You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.

...The sea... some have said is nothing but a library of all the tears in history.

I grew up in an underprivileged home.

Most good things happen with time; especially music, which needs time to breathe and to find its own way.

All great heroes have a flaw. It's one of the things that makes them heroes.

There are so many ways to respond to music besides feeling like someone's communicating with you. It gives me a charge.

I think it does surprise me a bit when people have a very fixed idea of what I'm like, based upon the work that I do, which is something that is very separate.

When I was young, I was so interested in baseball that my family was afraid I'd waste my life and be a pitcher. Later they were afraid I'd waste my life and be a poet. They were right.

I didn't become successful until I became myself

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.