Everybody around me was talented and gave everybody talent. Everybody painted. My mother had a beautiful voice. My father was a marvelous drawing-room actor.
King Charles, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor, lived and worked in hard bare rooms with no carpets, crowding to the fire in winter, using the window's sunshine in summer.
The most valuable writers are those in whom we find not themselves, or ourselves, or the fugitive era of their lifetimes, but the common vision of all times.
