Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I want to prove that if you write in strict meter and rhyme about subjects people care about, they will buy poetry.
When I was young I wanted to be the greatest blues singer of all time. I wrecked my education and left home for it.
Poetry is one of the oldest of all art forms, and one of its powers for shamans and tribal leaders was the mnemonic.
I'm very proud of the fact that I'm one of Britain's biggest selling poets. That gives me a huge amount of pleasure.
When I was young, I wanted to be the greatest blues singer of all time. I wrecked my education and left home for it.
I hear poets complaining: 'We face what our forebears did not face. We face TV. We face radio. We face this and that.'
Believing your own bullshit is always a perilous activity, but never more fatal than for the owner of a start-up venture.
The problem with rich lists is... it is impossible to know what someone is worth until they have died and you have sold it.
Money is color-blind, race-blind, sex-blind, degree-blind, and couldn't care less who brought you up or in what circumstances.
No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it.
Human beings are definitely changing the planet, but how much impact they are having on climate, I don't know and I don't care.
Rich people always have a certain degree of debt. Apparently it helps to reduce taxes. I'm not so hot on the bean-counting side.
I thoroughly object to getting old. If you could let me be 16 again, I'd give you everything I've got and everything I'll ever have.
You have an advantage that neither education nor upbringing can buy - you have almost nothing. And therefore you have almost nothing to lose.
Poetry forces a writer to condense and crystallise his thoughts and often represents a short cut to truths unsuspected by the author himself.
No woman or girl is going to want to spend time looking at pretty dresses on the Internet. Vogue is going to be around for a long time to come.
The belief that you have a great idea is not worth cuckoo spit. Ideas are ten a penny while the ability to execute counts for a great deal more.
I'm an entrepreneur, a businessman. I've got a lot of money, and that doesn't go very well with the whole 'starving artist in a garret' routine.
The richer you are and the more financial advisers you employ, the less likelihood there is that you can ever discover what you are really worth.
Very, very few entrepreneurs who accept a 51 percent partner in a new venture will get rich if they are also expected to run it. Control is mandatory.
It's very difficult to be continuously charitable in a capitalistic society. You've also got to make sure that you can pay everyone who works for you.
I write about whatever turns up. Every single day, I'm sitting down for three to five hours in the evenings wrestling away and producing far too much verse.
The best thing about being immensely wealthy is not having to be in any particular place at any particular time doing a particular task you don't want to do.
Having a great idea is simply not enough. The eventual goal is vastly more important than any idea. It is how ideas are implemented that counts in the long run
It's kind of a crazy thing to decide that you're going to be worth tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars and set out to do that. It doesn't suit everybody.
People really do not have time to read all the newspapers in the world and all the sites that we now commonly use on the web. There is no possibility of keeping up.
People think I'm just an old Luddite, but that's untrue. I buy every new gizmo as it comes out, play with it until I understand how it works, and then give it away.
In the end, the railroads made America and nanotech will make the 21st century, and that is the end of the story. The beginning of the story and the end of the story.
There is never a time in a company's history when cost control can be relegated to the back burner, but for a startup company, keeping costs low is a vital necessity.
When you're writing, you're in a totally different zone... I can start a difficult poem and look up at the clock and see to my astonishment that three hours have passed.
I am a born-again atheist, so there isn't going to be a funeral. I will be buried in a linen wrap in a cardboard coffin in my forest with an oak tree planted on my head.
I have been portrayed by actors in three television documentaries, two plays, one musical and a film. It's no fun watching yourself being traduced and imitated by an actor.
Fear not. For fear itself is fed by fear, and all fears pass. Did no one tell you so? Come take my hand, my friend, and we will peer into this fear's abyss. And jump! And know.
This modern mania for interfering in other's lives, usually under the guise of health and safety concerns, is highly irritating and counterproductive. Down with the nanny state.
I think having a great idea is vastly overrated. I know it sounds kind of crazy and counterintuitive. I don't think it matters what the idea is, almost. You need great execution.
You cannot properly bring up children when you are 69 or 70 and they are 12 and at the height of their madness. You can physically do it, but I don't think it's morally justified.
With the greatest of respect, I have watched Apple from the day it started. I was publishing magazines about the Apple II before most people had ever heard what a personal computer was.
As with the onset of sudden celebrity, for the newly rich, the world often becomes a darker, narrower, less generous place; a paradox that elicits scant sympathy, but is nonetheless true.
You can collect all the plastic bottle caps you want as long as you give me the money so we can get off this death trap, find somewhere else and have tremendous fun screwing that up as well.
I've always noted with some awe the reading habits of the Australian public. Australians read more newspapers and magazines per head of population than almost any other country in the world.
I've been busy for years, buying land, often under pseudonyms, and planting trees on it. All the money is going into it when I die.. and in the end I'd like to think that it will be 20 to 30,000 acres.
I've been busy for years, buying land, often under pseudonyms, and planting trees on it. All the money is going into it when I die - and in the end I'd like to think that it will be 20 to 30,000 acres.
Talent is indispensable, although it is 'always' replaceable. Just remember the simple rules concerning talent: Identify It, Hire It, Nurture It, Reward It, Protect It. And when the time comes, Fire It.
'The Week' is my favourite magazine. Everyone from presidents to CEOs of companies love it, politicians, people in the massive charity business in America, in the arts and even more especially in the media.
You have to persuade yourself that you absolutely don't care what happens. If you don't care, you've won. I absolutely promise you, in every serious negotiation, the man or woman who doesn't care is going to win.
Good ideas are like Nike sports shoes. They may facilitate success for an athlete who possesses them, but on their own they are nothing but an overpriced pair of sneakers. Sports shoes don't win races. Athletes do.
Discourse has ended in America. It's all just shouting and ranting and demonization. Do you know how the rest of the world laughs at you guys? Have you got any idea? They're just rocking with laughter night and day.
The rich are not a contented tribe. The demands from others to share their wealth become so tiresome, so insistent, they often decide they must insulate themselves. Insulation eventually breeds a mild form of paranoia.
I don't take investment advice from wealth managers. I have grown several businesses from scratch and amassed many millions from my publishing empire - why would I take advice from someone who has never experienced that?
Computers are wasteful of paper and time. Once, we'd get documents with a few errors. Now, people make hundreds of copies until each sheet is flawless and memos are duplicated endlessly. Managers get swamped with emails.