Try to keep the rebel artist alive in you, no matter how attractive or exhausting the temptation.

Jerusalem is ... the fabled city which for the Western mind is as much dream as stone ... a compressed symbol of our most sublime aspirations along with our most disgusting, hatefully brainless excursions into religious bigotry and fratricide.

The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of politicians.

...an everlasting funeral marches round your heart.

I am bewildered by the death of love. And my responsibility for it.

Everything we are is at every moment alive in us.

The Greeks used to use the same stories, the same mythology, time after time, different authors. There was no premium placed upon an original story, and indeed, Shakespeare likewise. A lot of people wrote plays about great kings. They didn't expect a brand-new story. It was what that new author made of the old story. It is probably the same now. We disguise it by inventing what seem to be new stories, but they're basically the same story anyway.