The more my work improves or broadens or widens, the more surely I tame myself.

Some of the words and symbols and images from childhood will continually be part and parcel of my personality.

I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself.

We should always look back on our own past with a sort of contempt, as long as the tenderness is there - but please let some of the contempt be there.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.

That vision of a common culture is now simply a remote wistfulness.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in.

A bad act done will fester and create in its own way. It's not only goodness that creates. Bad things create. They have their own yeast.

There's no end to the inventiveness of critics, I tell you. Because they can't write fiction, they put their impulse into their analysis of work.

Children are very cruel, yes. Of course. Children are extraordinarily cruel little creatures.

Television's Mr. Filth: that's me.

Love is the ecstasy of life.

Your perception of life is determined by experiences you allow take its abode in your thought pattern

Government could avoid having opinions about so many things if it would quit subsidizing so many things.

Rain clouds come floating in, not to muddy my days ahead, but to make me calm, happy and hopeful.

Nothing is impossible when we follow our inner guidance even when its direction may threaten us by reversing our usual logic.

One of the ways in which I feel close to God is writing poetry.

Recognize that there is a time to be left-brained and a time to be right-brained; a time to be efficient and a time to be creative; a time to work and a time to play.

I have never been disappointed when I asked in a humble and sincere way for God's help. I pray often. I think I pray more often since January 12th.

Only I can snatch my own weave

Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the state die? Oh, no.