Lord Byron Quotes

I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.

A book cannot apologize for what people may think it should be. It has to be authoritative.

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.

I have no literary approach - except to literature.

In the fallen there is danger of pride and vainglory, since they prefer their own judgment to the judgment of everyone else, usurping what is not their own by setting themselves up as judges in their own cause when the rightful judge is their superior.

If I scribbled a few words on a cocktail napkin and showed it to my family, they'd proclaim it astonishing and more culturally relevant than the Bible.

I'm sure I've been influenced by every fine writer I've ever read, from Dickens and Austen to Auden and Jane Hirshfield. And also, the short stories of Updike, Cheever, Munro, Alice Adams, and Doris Lessing. And the plays of Oscar Wilde. And paintings by Alice Neel and Matisse.

Many people around the President have sizeable egos before entering government, some with good reason. Their new positions will do little to moderate their egos.

Remember, I have a Ph.D. in English literature.

Face it, you have to be sort of an egomaniac to write something down and think that anyone is going to want to read it.

Some smart man once said that on the most exalted throne in the world, we are seated on nothing but our own arse.

Often times, the more power and prestige a person achieves, the more arrogant a person can become.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

There is a bit of arrogance with 'Hollywood' types that doesn't sit well with game developers.

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

Hubris itself will not let you be an artist.

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

[Douglas] MacArthur is the type of man who thinks that when he gets to heaven, God will step down from the great white throne and bow him into His vacated seat.

An empire is an immense egotism.

I don't want to go around like some kind of bleeding giant or whatever, or thinking I'm a big deal, because it doesn't help you do your work. I think people like Hemingway got into an awful lot of trouble that way.

I am not the humblest person in the world. I admit that.

I don't want you to think I'm better than people or that I know better than people.

I've seen people, when they get into these bigger and bigger jobs, it goes to their heads. I've seen it. Some people in life change who they are, and some don't. I'm basically the same guy I've always been.

I don't choose to be humble.