The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great.

We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.

A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.

Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.

Every child has the capacity to be everything.

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

You have to be grown up, really grown up, not merely in years, to understand your parents.

There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.

Time to do what he did best - plot dastardly acts.

The world slides, the world goes, and death makes equal the rich and the poor

Luck is the devil with a halo

Don’t trade the ultimate for the immediate. Don’t settle for less, wait for God’s best.

Love is the light that can shine so bright.

If you want to visualize something in its fullness you have to look at every perspective and every angle, and that means - sometimes uncomfortably - looking at things you don't want to look at.

At the moment there are some England players who are the stars of their club teams, but not for their country. It's difficult to explain.

The loss of one's dignified bearing is often sudden.

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheel-work of the universe.

I'd have conversations with the camera crew about what was going on in the scene, so that they were prepared to shoot it. I love the fact that when you work, you create this tribe.