Renato

“The hatred of your country is not because it attacks theirs; it is because it keeps theirs safe. Never seek popularity. You can have supremacy or be loved but never both. What is felt toward you is ten percent genuine disagreement and ninety percent envy. Never forget two things! No man can ever forgive his protector. There is no loathing that any man harbors more intense than that toward his benefactor.”
― Frederick Forsyth, Avenger

“Wanting to sound like other people has its temptations. There are inherited habits of speech guaranteed to make us sound authoritative, intelligent, worldly, appropriately grateful, or deeply moved.”
― Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life

“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at 9.00 sharp. — Somerset Maugham”
― Jimmy Carr, Before & Laughter

“Afterwards we were having drinks, and were just about to leave – Noel was very good at leavetaking – when they asked him to go and see someone who was about to have “deep sleep” treatment. When some mental cases are so disturbed, they put them to sleep for a day and a night. Anyway, this poor sailor had been shipwrecked in the North Sea three times, and had been stranded in freezing water for hours, and had fishbite – the fish actually bite your legs . . . Noel . . . stayed there for well over half an hour, talking to the boy in the dark, telling him it would be all right. Later we got a letter from the hospital saying that Noel had done more for that boy than all their treatment could.”
― Philip Hoare, Noel Coward: A Biography of Noel Coward