"There are young men and women up and down the land, who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don't have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren't lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers, cars and celebrities. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing thing there is."

"I really must stop saying sorry; it doesn't make things any better or worse [...] If only I had it in me to be all fierce, fearless and forthright, instead of forever sprinkling my discourse with pitiful retractions, apologies and prevarications. [...] (Artists) I know are uninterested in the opinion of the world and wholly unconcerned with self-explanation. Self-revelation, yes. [...] (I am) over-earnest, over-appeasing. Wanting to be liked is often a very unlikeable characteristic. Certainly I don't like it in myself. But then, there is a lot in myself that I don't like."