Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see.

When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.

‚The Lady’s World‘ should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women’s opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar.

A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

I became a Republican in 1951, the first year I could vote.

It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.

I want to go down in the history books with what I’ve achieved.

I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

There has been a huge attack against private sector unions. Actually, that’s been going on since the Second World War.

It is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

I’ve been interested in Japan since the 1930s, when I read about Japan’s vicious crimes in Manchuria and China.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

I am in the world feeling my way to light ‚amid the encircling gloom.‘

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Trying to be fascinating is an asinine position to be in.

Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

History, a distillation of rumour.