When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.

I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.

Damian Lewis

Education is not a discipline at all. Half vocational, half an emptiness dressed up in garments borrowed from philosophy, psychology, literature.

Edward Blishen

My art and profession is to live.

Michel de Montaigne

Every woman needs one man in her life who is strong and responsible. Given this security, she can proceed to do what she really wants to do-fall in love with men who are weak and irresponsible.

Richard J. Needham

I'll have no husband, if you be not he.

William Shakespeare

Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.

Aristotle

I clearly believe a lot more than some of my coalition colleagues - Tories - in redistribution and using the tax system for that purpose. I also believe in the government having an active role in the economy, which is having an industrial strategy. I'm not a believer in laissez-faire.

Vince Cable

One must learn, if one is to see the beauty in Japan, to like an extraordinarily restrained and delicate loveliness.

Miriam Beard

It is always well to accept your own shortcomings with candor but to regard those of your friends with polite incredulity.

Russell Lynes

There's one blessing only, the source and cornerstone of beatitude -- confidence in self.

Seneca (Seneca the Elder)

Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite.

Jean Kerr

Some things aren't meant to be known. Only believed.

Mary E. Pearson