"You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword"

"Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself."

"I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense."

"...ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge..."

"I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read."

"Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all."

"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence."

"One can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid"

"Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers."

"Nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing."

"I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people."

"The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it."

"I am but little disposed to put things in writing. One almost always regrets doing so."

"Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices."

"I held it close to my face and smelled the ink. I have always loved the smell of ink in a new book."

"It is strange how ideas can float about and be ignored until they are put into a book. A book can be a weapon..."

"You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read."

"In the no-nonsense school of adversity, which we did not choose for ourselves, we are learning how to operate a labor union."

"Organizing is an educational process. The best educational process in the union is the picket line and the boycott. You learn about life."

"When I was growing up, I was very lucky. My family was the most important thing to me. They provided me with somewhere safe to grow and learn, and I know I was fortunate not to have been confronted by serious adversity at a young age."

"Everyone teases me in the family that I spend far too long chatting. So I think I've still got to learn a little bit more and to pick up a few more tips, I suppose."

"Parenting is tough."

"In Wales it's brilliant. I go to the pub and see everybody who I went to school with. And everybody goes 'So what you doing now?' And I go, 'Oh, I'm doing a film with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins.' And they go, 'Ooh, good.' And that's it."

"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing."