“Have you ever heard apple wood talking? It’s the most loquacious of all. You really can’t get a word in edgeways.”

I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys. The bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk; the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after midnight; the hour when the family come home.

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics.

You can put city polish on a man, but by golly, it seems you can’t ever rub it off him.

Spring, summer, autumn, or winter. I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

The idea of perfection always gives one a chance to talk without knowing facts.

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends.

If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If he says perhaps he means no. And if he says no, he’s the hell of a diplomat.

A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country.

When the desire ain’t on me I don’t need help. When it is on me I don’t want any. See? Like the old fellah that never mended his roof. Said on a wet day he couldn’t do it and on a dry day it was as good as anybody’s.

Burning logs can carry on quite a conversation!

A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them?

the human soul, by once suffering as much as it is capable of, purchases a strange and terrible immunity to all the rest of life’s sorrows.

There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.

Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted.

I’ll make me a nice comfortable garment to shut out the heat and the cold,’ and then it ends by becoming a strait-jacket.

I have more ideas than I’ll ever be able to write in five lifetimes.

This is a guy who they would have secret meetings about to change the rules. So, that’s going to be my legacy: the most dominant player ever.

Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it.

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.

Whenever I received too much praise, it just didn’t feel right to me – ever.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

I cleave the heavens and soar to the infinite. And while I rise from my own globe to others and penetrate ever further through the eternal field. That which others saw from afar, I leave far behind me.

If you ever want to be interrogated, get Michael Shannon to do it. He’s an amazing man. I loved working with him.