Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings And some are treasured for their markings - They cause the eyes to melt Or the body to shriek without pain.

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases - threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear.

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple — to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

No one is exempt and everyone's pain has a different smell. At night, when all the colours die, they hide in pairsand read about themselves—in colour, with their eyelids shut.

In his autobiography Stravinsky relates that the first music he remembers was made by a peasant, working his hand in his armpit to produce a rhytmic farting.

He was making music - Howells, Finzi, Holst - so you could see the sounds in the serried air.Serried. Then just as suddenly empty when his sound-proof right hand closed off the notes.

Could he really want a relationship with a woman who was at the point in life of trading beauty for wisdom?

You really need to be able to eat the burger like you're loving it. I don't want somebody that's going to go out there and say, "Well, I don't eat burgers."

Let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God. Perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity.

It is as important to monitor your mind constantly as it is to sit down and practice meditation.

Ideas and thoughts collide and sort themselves out in these fruitful collisions.

I've always loved Scotland, and I'm not a huge fan of big cities, to be honest. I like them to dip into for a bit, but I'm not sure I would want to live in one again.

Losses are inevitable, but excuses are optional.

God is playing my guitar, I am with God when I play.

I don't like publicity, being in the limelight.

Remember that the stock market is manic-depressive.