“O dear white children casual as birds,Playing among the ruined languages,So small beside their large confusing words,So gay against the greater silencesOf dreadful things you did…”

“Oh dear white children, casual as birds,Playing among the ruined languages,So small beside their large confusing words.”

“Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.”

“We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and see our illusions die.”

“I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.”

“(Precocious children rarely grow up good). My aunts and uncles thought me quite atrocious. For using words more adult than I should”

“In actual fact, however, the revolt of Ibsen and Shaw against the conventional nineteenth century drama could very well be described as a return to Shakespeare, as an attempt once again to present human beings in their historical and social setting and not, as playwrights since the Restoration had done, either as wholly private or as embodiments of the social manners of a tiny class. Shakespeare’s plays, it is true, are not, in the Shavian sense, "dramas of thought," that is to say, not one of his characters is an intellectual: it is true, as Shaw says, that, when stripped of their wonderful diction, the philosophical and moral views expressed by his characters are commonplaces, but the number of people in any generation or society whose thoughts are not commonplace is very small indeed. On the other hand, there is hardly one of his plays which does not provide unending food for thought, if one cares to think about it.”