I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators - Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists - Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion. In Botticelli's paintings, every pebble and every leaf is rendered with a religious devotion; there is reverence inherent in paying such close attention to every stone, turning painting itself into a form of worship, an act of prayer.

Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!

He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.

"Whatever fear he'd instilled in people on the streets was of no consequence inside the market, packed with ramshackle stalls and vendors and food stands, smoke drifting throughout, the tang of blood and spark of magic acrid in his nostrils. And above it all, against the far wall of the enormous space, was a towering mosaic, the tiles taken from an ancient temple in Pangera, restored and re-created here in loving detail, despite its gruesome depiction: cloaked and hooded death, the skeleton's face grinning out from the cowl, a scythe in one hand and an hourglass in the other. Above its head, words had been crafted in the Republic's most ancient language:

True love is like a tower house; this one requires strong pillars and foundation to withstand windstorms. And the mains of these pillars are patience and sacrifice!

Once upon a time in the land of Shinar, God came down to see the city and the tower. People were united and spoke in one language. Then God confound their language and caused them scattered all over the planet earth. I believe, because of our technology, there will be one computer-based language on earth. Then God will come back again and make us all scattered all over the stars constellation.

So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?

If only it were possible to love without injury ? fidelity isn't enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again ? I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower.

My mother was the dearest sweetest angel. She didn't talk she sang. She was a tower of strength.

We should like to have some towering geniuses to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

You can't imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

'The Panorama' is also the last place anywhere in New York where the World Trade Center still stands whole as it stood in the early morning of September 11. I can also see the corner where I saw the first tower fall and howled out loud. Seeing the buildings again here is uplifting healing.

Currently I am overseeing the construction of the new Trump Tower in Chicago. I am involved in meeting with the construction crews architects and sales teams. I am learning a lot and working with some of the best in the business.

I'm learning English at the moment. I can say 'Big Ben' 'Hello Rodney' 'Tower Bridge' and 'Loo'.

Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying.

Be as a tower firmly set Shakes not its top for any blast that blows.

Though I love the luxury of the Waldorf Towers room service there doesn't do soul food.

Pale death with impartial step knocks at the hut of the poor and the towers of kings.

You show up in Paris and on the drive from the airport to the hotel you're like 'This is so cool! I want to see something! I want to go to the Eiffel Tower!' And then you leave the next morning. You think Oh I didn't get to do anything. I tell people: I've been just about everywhere but I've seen nothing.

A great city whose image dwells in the memory of man is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world Art.

As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex.