“A ham sandwich is better than nothing. Nothing is better than eternal happiness. So eternal happiness is beaten by a ham sandwich.”

“Genius, as we tend to talk about it today, is some sort of mysterious and combustible substance that burns brightly and burns out. It's the strange gift of poets and pop stars that allows them to p...”

“A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the o...”

“Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. No angels handed him his lines, no fairies proofread for hi...”

“Another werewolf thing. Like most animals, we spent a large part of our lives engaged in the three Fs of basic survival. Feeding, fighting and... reproduction.”

“A conglomerate of complicated words, they confuse, condemn and cajole, created, he is sure, for the sole purpose of fuddling the listener, which in this case is regrettably him.”

“Tempted to type meaningless twaddle all the time on Twitter...with alliteration, no less!”

“And there was never a better time to delve for pleasure in language than the sixteenth century, when novelty blew through English like a spring breeze. Some twelve thousand words, a phenomenal numb...”

“O! Learn to read what silent love hath writ:to hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.”

“What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyesWould, with themselves, shut up my thoughts...”