“A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.”

It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.

But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.

Don’t begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

… there are shadows because there are hills.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

I can only do what’s easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can’t, and won’t, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who’s strong enough to boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss.

I punish myself more than anybody else does if I am stupid about my actions, and I suffer, really suffer.

I don’t control what people say. I don’t control what people put on dot-com or anything else.

I don’t know if I’m different from everybody else, but there’s really only two things to me that are really, really important – recruiting good players in the program and developing those players once they get here.

I at least wanted them to get into a respectable position before anyone else took over.

All customer expectations are only what you and your competitor have led him to expect. He knows nothing else.

Ability is the art of getting credit for all the home runs somebody else hits.

My most important goal is to set myself up on every Sunday to have a chance to win, and I know if I do those things, then everything else will take care of itself.

No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.