Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.

I felt the beginning of a passion, hopeless in the long run, but very nourishing, for identifying myself with people who were not my own, and whose lives were governed by ideas alien to mine.

Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.

It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent; but there is talent in the tongues.

We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.

It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening.

How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.