Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

Only priests and fools are fearless and I've never been on the best of terms with God.

Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.

She taught me I should never do anything in private I did not want talked about in public, and cautioned me not to talk in my sleep.

Metal rusts, music lasts forever.

Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.

No hard feelings about that time in the Crucible when you mixed my salts and I was nearly blind for a day. No. No, really, drink up!

He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places.

We left you there, lonely, Beauty your power, Wisdom your watchman, To hold the clay tower.from 'The Tale of the Tiger Tree

Unlike most I don’t fear prison, never have, never will. Obviously I don’t want it, I hate it, but it’s the hate that drives me on to survive.

Leadership is about being a servant first.

In this world, I've got no choice: there is nothing left at all; and you don't notice, but that's all right: you don't know what it's like.

It is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.

But I always felt that I'd rather be provincial hot-tamale than soup without seasoning.

I was never a wet-eyed, passionate writer; I was always a policeman.

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever" he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"

It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.