Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

I don't know if any single book made me want to write. C.S. Lewis was the first writer to make me aware that somebody was writing the book I was reading - these wonderful parenthetical asides to the reader.

Imagination is a screen onto which the evil spirits can 'project' images, temptations presented as stimulating entertainments, offering us pleasurable rewards if we give in to the temptation.

Most of the creative industries have been deskilled by these really powerful ideologies of punk in music and Warhol in the visual arts. I think it would be great for us collectively to ask whether it's had a negative or positive effect in contributing imaginative stuff to our culture.

I could, of course, have written about the film world and the jealousy there and the frequent belief that others don't have talent. But, for some reason, it just struck me to write about art.