When the habitually even-tempered suddenly fly into a passion that explosion is apt to be more impressive than the outburst of the most violent amongst us.

There are some people to whom muddled thinking and self-deception are the two most unforgivable crimes in the world.

There are, fortunately, very few people who can say that they have actually attended a murder.

Mourning is not forgetting. ... It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust.

The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.

I am one of those people who are blessed ... with a nature which has to interfere. If I see a thing that needs doing I do it.

Waiting is one of the great arts.

She felt damned. As though she were marching to her death. She felt like had been sentenced. And yet she felt eerily free.

We represent the true human condition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. . . . Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit...

Whenever I've been well-known or hitting the press, I've always had to get my credit card out to prove I'm Damien Hirst.

Not all living creatures die. An amoeba, for example, need never die; it need not even, like certain generals, fade away. It just divides and becomes two new amoebas.

Marriage is something that should be tried at least once. It's educational.

On energy, we should be exploring for domestic sources of energy.

I had this urge to play the game of football because so many people said I couldn't do it.

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

We must cultivate our own garden.