And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from?

What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose.

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools.

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.

And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from?

I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!

For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence.

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain.

If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day.

My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing.

Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.

Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.

You'll drift apart, it's true, but you'll be out in the open, part of everything alive again.

Being a practiced liar doesnt mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all its that which gives their lies such wide eyed conviction.

All good things pass away.

People are too complicated to have simple labels.

A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.

Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

The difference between talking on your cell phone while driving and speaking with a passenger is huge. The person on the other end of the cell phone is chattering away, oblivious.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

Pacifist propaganda and the resolutions of the parliamentarians encouraged such treaties, and toward the end of the nineteenth century their number had increased considerably.

Will Arnett is one of the funniest guys I know. He has seen it all and done it all and come out the other end pretty savvy and pretty strong.

I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.

A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

Towards the end of the Lord Chamberlain's era, when his hold was being loosened, private prosecutions began to happen. A member of staff at the Royal Court ordered to stop the play, and the police were brought in.

A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

The 20th century taught us how far unbridled evil can and will go when the world fails to confront it. It is time that we heed the lessons of the 20th century and stand up to these murderers. It is time that we end genocide in the 21st century.