When I was a child I wanted to be Pope. My greatest disappointment is missing out on that. I also wanted to be a tap dancer but I never fulfilled that ambition either.

The English can laugh and at the same time strike you down, without the least compunction. It is the secret of their success as a nation.

I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my cockney accent.

There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive for action or change.

You don't have to be brought up in a grand house to have a sense of the past, and I truly believe that there are certain people to whom or through whom the territory - the place, the past - speaks.

I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.

Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

The endless chatter of this journey had wearied me.

Yes, I have inherited the past because I have acknowledged it at last? And, now that I have come to understand it, I no longer need to look back.

I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned.

One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.

I routinely inform people when I meet them that I am like a real life version of Dory the fish, as I am very forgetful and have problems tracking conversations.

If you take action while you are mad, you will always make the wrong decision.

Stop being a mystery, discover yourself!

We had no idea what we were getting into. We thought we were just doing this little vampire movie in Portland. There was just a lot of silliness, a lot of hijinks and bad behavior.

The inspiration of a noble cause enables men to do things they did not dream themselves capable of before

I spent time in, like, criminal courts, and covering murder trials for papers.

To bring one's self to believe in a truth that has just dawned upon one is the first step towards progress; to persuade others is the second.

While praying I passed into a state of entrancement, and in that state I saw the angel and the plates.

Abrams's Advice: When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.

If thou hadst simplicity and purity, thou wouldst be able to comprehend all things without error, and behold them without danger. The pure heart safely pervades not only heaven, but hell.