“Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?”

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.

Money pads the edges of things.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

We move between two darknesses.

“After 17” is a song I wrote when my first daughter went to college, so that’s kind of where I’m at in that part of my life.

Technology is anything invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff.

George Harrison: The day after the Blue Angel audition.

I’ve had to adjust to karaoke as a modern reality that obscures our hunt for what we’re truly after.

But it’s a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life.” -Damien

10.30 Newsnight: What Are The Chances Of World War Three Breaking Out After You Have Gone To Bed?

Really, I didn’t know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and by my mother.

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.