“The intellect of the wise is like glass:it admits the light of heaven and reflects it.”

“You make love like a wounded panther. You are like a paintshop on fire.”

“You give them an environment where they feel they can grow. But also make bloody sure you challenge them. You make sure they realise learning is hard. Because if you don’t, if you only make it a safe haven, if it’s all clap-happy, and ‘everything the kids do is great’, then what are you creating? Emotional toffees, who’ve actually learnt nothing, but who then have to go back and face the real world … Find that balance, it stretches you, it stretches you as far as you’ll go.”

“Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.”

“And it's a preference, a long-held preference, what you might call a 'habit of mind'—putting words into other people's mouths. And those people are played by people whose profession is to pretend to be other people. For which purpose, they adopt gestures, voices, intonations, even sexual attitudes not their own. On stage, they affect to be ravished and amused by someone whom they will, afterwards, run a mile to avoid having dinner with. Likewise, they spit torrents of abuse against an actor who later, later, in the softness of the night, they will share their bed with.”

“On September 11th, America changed. Yes. It got much stupider.”

“Most painters have painted themselves. So have most poets: not so palpably indeed, but more assiduously. Some have done nothing else.”