I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.

As a teacher you can see the difference in kids who have parents who were involved. That difference, by the time these kids get to the third grade, is drastic.

Jenna Bush

I always felt like my future was at stake every time I stepped on stage and that was kind of hair-raising. At some point I just went, don't be frightened, you can't do anything wrong, it's your show.

Rickie Lee Jones

All too often, government's response to social breakdown has been a classic case of 'patching' - a case of handing money out, containing problems and limiting the damage but, in doing so, supporting - even reinforcing - dysfunctional behaviour.

Iain Duncan Smith

Well, nowIf little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving youLittle by littleIf suddenly you forget meDo not look for meFor I shall already have forgotten youIf you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my lifeAnd you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have rootsRememberThat on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my armsAnd my roots will set off to seek another land

Pablo Neruda

Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.

Miriam Beard

There was once a time when art history and film were basically the same medium, but art history is frozen in late-19th-century technology that has survived into the early 21st century.

Robert Nelson

Some remedies are worse than the disease.

Publilius Syrus

Writer: What, above all, I'm primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, that's it, really. I'm taking the pith out of reality.

Alan Bennett

Be smart, but never show it.

Louis B Mayer

Truth alone wounds.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

Simone Weil

The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.

William Westmoreland