Tyranny is usually tempered with assassination, and Democracy must be tempered with culture. In the absence of this, it turns into a representation of collective folly.
But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.
I don't want my poems to be sentimental, though I do acknowledge that sentiment is probably rather under-reported in a lot of people's feelings a lot of the time.
Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril
I am a vigilant monarchist. I want to see things evolve. The direction the monarchy seems to be moving in - towards a more mainland-European model - is one I would feel sympathetic about.
Honor the miraculousness of the ordinary.
I write between 5. 30am and 9. 00. That way, I hope I carry over something from my dream time.
To the feudal aristocracy and the aristocracy of the spirit, nobility derives from diametrically opposite sources. The glory of the feudal aristocrat is in being a link in the longest possible chain of ancestors. The glory of the aristocrat of the spirit is in having no ancestors - or having as few as possible. If an artist is his own ancestor, if he has only descendents, he enters history as a genius; if he has few ancestors, or is related to them distantly, he enters history as a talent.
An arrow may not be a shocklance, yet it can still kill you.
Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.
The Holy Grail of neuroscience has been to understand how and where information is encoded in the brain.