Like virtue, poetry is its own reward. … The immortality game, like that of getting into the circle of the two hundred, can be wicked and delusionary. … That leaves you with perhaps the most important reward of all: personal satisfaction. … You are more likely to succeed at poetry, as in love, if you get success out of your head. Concentrate on quality. Learn the joy of creating excellence — whether or not anyone else recognizes it.

That’s the paradox,” he said. “You would think that you elect this guy and you want him to effect change, and then he gets elected, and people don’t care about bills being passed.

We all know the one about the Emperor walking around with nothing on, while everyone admires the finery of his garments – garments so fine that only really clever and smart people like investment bankers can see them. The rest of us thought that debt, was, well, debt, but the bankers said no, debt is asset. It’s just that we couldn’t see it because we were so stupid…

Yes, we need to stabilise our present situation, and then, perhaps, we could ask a really simple question – far too simple for the clever people – what is money for? At least that way it stops being an end in itself.

Then, the best thing of all – coming home in the dead of night to this beautiful place where there are no lights and no noise, and where the dog, the cats, the owls, the foxes, the badgers and the stars are more or less where I left them.

When we have the good fortune to have a noble friend with whom we can have noble conversation then it is also our way of repaying that gift by being a noble friend to others. Noble friends are like a chain reaction. We don’t only need to search for one. We can also be one.

The polluting of the ballot box, and a destruction of vote is not the mutilation of a piece of paper. It is the destruction of the individual’s opinion….