Today I was a teacher, employed. True, I was also a teacher untried, but that could also be an advantage. I would learn, by God I’d learn. Nothing was going to stop me.

So long as we learn it doesn’t matter who teaches us, does it?

Instead, we try to give them affection, confidence and guidance, more or less in that order, because experience has shown us that those are their most immediate needs.

The betrayal I now felt was greater because it had been perpetrated with the greatest of charm and courtesy.

I imagine some people, like some toys, are born defective - which I suppose makes us all broken toys, don't you think?

If Jesus is not the focus, the worship is bogus.

No one likes to talk about the positive parts of getting older and aging into orphanhood, how with your parents you often bury a lot of things you were never able to confront or fix or let go of.

The man who avoids debt doesn't have to worry about avoiding his creditors.

From the time I was a child I wanted to be like my mother. Not necessarily an actress - I never dreamed I'd have the courage. But an active, volatile woman like she was.

There are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the prophets, and no politics like those which the Scriptures teach.

If income was directly proportional to technical proficiency and education, classical and jazz musicians would be some of the most affluent people in the world.

I feel that if God had really wanted us to have enough oil, he would never have given us a Department of Energy.

Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.

The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.