I don’t believe necessarily the past is in the past. It’s eternal, it’s all around us.
Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.
It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.
In so far as I have any beliefs, I suppose I’m like that old Peggy Lee song, ‘Is That All There Is?’ I want to believe there’s something else going on, but what that something else is I don’t pretend to know.
It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences – there’s no real pattern.
It’s only recently that we’ve discovered that the artist’s inner self is somehow more important than the public world. I’m happier to create exterior pieces for the world rather than to express something I deeply feel or wish to say.
In London, I’ve always lived within 10 miles of where I was born. You see, there is something called a spirit of place, and my place happens to be London, at least once a fortnight.
I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that sense ‘English Music’ is an exercise in the spiritual as well as the material. I have always been attracted to the Gothic and spiritual imagination, and I’ve always been interested in visionaries.
I don’t know if I have a voice of my own. I don’t see me being an important person with something to say. I haven’t. I’ve got nothing to say. My opinion is of no consequence or value.
I don’t find myself interesting as a person and the details I find boring, quite frankly. You could sum it up in a few words or sentences really: came from nothing. Self-educated. Luck. Energy. Curiosity. Ambition. That’s it. Nothing at all can illuminate the work as far as I can tell.
Health, money. That’s what people worried about in the 14th century as much as today. I find it so much more interesting than the supposed activities of kings, queens, generals.
All cities are impressive in their way, because they represent the aspiration of men to lead a common life; those people who wish to live agreeable lives, and in constant intercourse with one another, will build a city as beautiful as Paris.
To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding.
There are certain people who seem doomed to buy certain houses. The house expects them. It waits for them.
A triptych in which the presiding deities are Mother, England and Me.
I had to paraphrase the paraphrase.
I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned.
Only those with great ambitions know what great fears drive them forward.
One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one’s own bad lines.
The English can laugh and at the same time strike you down, without the least compunction. It is the secret of their success as a nation.