Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.
— A. N. Wilson
Tennyson seems to be the patron saint of the wishy washies, which is perhaps why I admire him so much, not only as a poet, but as a man.
It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.
The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.
The United States is the ultimate land of optimistic promise, but it also gave birth to quintessentially pessimistic tragedy: 'Moby-Dick.'
'In Memoriam' has been my companion for all my grownup life.
If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.
Truth comes to us mediated by human love.
Since Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and Rutherford and Bohr revolutionised physics, our picture of the world has radically changed.
I should prefer to have a politician who regularly went to a massage parlour than one who promised a laptop computer for every teacher.
