To love it too much is to obscure and not see what is there.

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.

You want to be competent? she thought. You want to learn to be in control of what goes on around you, rather than just being pushed around? Then you’ll have to learn to deal with failure.

No child should have to see all that I have seen

He repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.

Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.

Sometimes I think your life and mine are under the protection of some supreme being or fate , because, after many years of parallel thought, we find ourselves in the positions we now occupy.

We don't seek God's power, we seek His presence. His power & everything else we need is always found in His presence.

I'm learning new levels of patience, perseverance and desire.

I have always done films with friends rather than strangers.

The price of civilization is instinctual renunciation.

Silverfish looked down. "Oh. Are you a dwarf?" Cuddy gave him a blank stare. "Are you a giant?" he said. "Me? Of course not!" "Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes."