I'm a very positive person, but this whole concept of having to always be nice, always smiling, always happy, that's not real. It was like I was wearing a mask. I was becoming this perfectly chiselled sculpture, and that was bad. That took a long time to understand.

All political careers end in failure, but few did it so quickly as David Cameron's. He came to power promising not to 'bang on about Europe' and ended up having the continent's name chiselled into the lid of his political coffin.

Writing is like sculpturing words out of a block of imagination. Sentences chisel the story, then characters make it their own.

I joy that Death is this Democrat; and hopeless of all other real and permanent democracies, still hug the thought, that though in life some heads are crowned with gold, and some bound round with thorns, yet chisel them how they will, head-stones are all alike.

A statue isn't built from the ground up -- it's chiseled out of a block of marble -- and I often wonder if we aren't likewise shaped by the qualities we lack, outlined by the empty space where the marble used to be. I'll be sitting on a train. I'll be lying awake in bed. I'll be watching a movie; I'll be laughing. And then, all of a sudden, I'll be struck with the paralyzing truth: It's not what we do that makes us who are. It's what we don't do that defines us.

A poet is simply an artist whose medium is human emotions. ?A poet chisels away at our own sensibilities, shaping our vision while molding our hearts. ?A poet wraps words around our own feelings and presents them as fresh gifts to humanity.

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering.... The love of God did not protect His own Son.... He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.

Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountiantop

It's funny - I read that women look to chiseled-faced guys for one-night stands and to round-faced guys for marriage. When I'm rounder in the face I like to say 'This is my long-term look.' Or 'This is my wife-and-kids look right here.'

A sculptor wields The chisel and the stricken marble grows To beauty.