“Fame always finds the village idiot.”

“A village somewhere was missing it's idiot.”

“You're an idealist, and I pity you as I would the village idiot.”

“Fame does not define me. If you are looking for fame to define you, then you will never be happy and you’ll always be searching for happiness, and you will never find it in fame. Fulfillment comes from within you, by being authentic to yourself — not chasing fame.”

“In the old days, they put idiots in the village stocks. Now we put them on the Today programme.”

“The new heroism — put a village idiot into a pressure cooker, seal it up tight, and shoot him at the moon.”

“Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.”

“Mechanical instruments, potentially a vehicle of rational human purposes, are scarcely a blessing when they enable the gossip of the village idiot and the deeds of the thug to be broadcast to a million people each day.”

“…because city honours are not village honours. Like certain wines, they do not travel; carry them back to the village and you find they are dust in your hands.”

“The village idiots in her bed
Never cared that her eyes were red
Never cared that her brain was dead.
In the hours that her face was alive
It was a thing just to be by her side.”