How strange are the tricks of memory, which, often hazy as a dream about the most important events, religiously preserve the merest trifles. - Richard Francis Burton

"The actor Richard Burton once wrote an article for the New York Times about his experience playing the role of Winston Churchill in a television drama:

"In the course of preparing myself...I realized afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history.... What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac prisoners of war, 'We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth? Such simple — minded cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified but reluctant awe for such single — minded and merciless ferocity." — "

They walked the water's vasty breadth of blue,
parting the restless billows on their way.

Starting in a hollowed log of wood — some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself 'Why?' and the only echo is 'damned fool!... the Devil drives'.