To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one's own way, than ever before.

Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight

I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.

New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.

What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.

The Church is both organism and organization - Woven together in a beautifully messy dance that stumbles across the stage of a fallen world.

I suppose the test of one's decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found that one can never please the people they wanted to please.

All knowledge pursued merely for the enrichment of personal learning and the accumulation of personal treasure leads you away from the path

The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work how who was to blame.

I have to say that the judges and our judiciary system makes better decisions than the politicians.

Once you are in the orbit of your destiny, weightlessness is the only result.

I've been to Japan, I've been to China, I've been to Africa, I've been to the Middle East, I've been to Europe a little bit. I've never been to South America.

In a Cafe" I watched a man in a cafe fold a slice of bread as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking at the photograph of a dead lover.

I can’t believe Sadie’s going to let me have the last word. Our experience together must’ve really taught her something. Ow, she just hit me. Never mind.

Only I keep wishing I could think of a way...to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games.