Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.

We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.

Authority is itself inherently an act of imagination.

Issac Stern rule: the better your technique, the more impossible your standards.

The pleasures of relaxed chat, of casual conversation, encourage the ethnographer in everyone

Aw I don't wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys.'...But you'll miss all that, just for some old wine.'There's wisdom in wine, goddam it!' I yelled. 'Have a shot!

I was brought up, ' Freddy informed him, 'not to suffer anxiety about decisive initiative of all types.

The simplest answer is to act.

After all, it is an ancient and valuable right of the English people to turn their nouns into verbs when they are so minded.

It's now much more 50-50 in favour of Everton.

English country life is more like Chekhov than The Archers or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.

For as long as I could push air in and out of my chest, I would remember this moment that could never be measured.

General Washington had rather incautiously encamped the bulk of his army on Long Island - a large and plentiful district about two miles from the city of New York

Reaching a 'creative' state of mind thru positive action is considered preferable to waiting for 'inspiration'.

The institutional leader is primarily an expert in the promotion and protection of values.