How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions crippling enough to prevent them living normal lives.

So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime.

Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust of women's bodies.

There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.

The strongest predictor of unhappiness is anyone who has had a mental illness in the last 10 years. It is an even stronger predictor of unhappiness than poverty - which also ranks highly.

This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition.

Most people come to fear not death itself, but the many terrible ways of dying.

Crime is only the worst example, but it is a paradigm for other Labour policy disasters. No one tells the voters that crime is falling: let them stay scared senseless.

Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal.

But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes.

And be very careful at the front, Paul.”Ah, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with you. What poor wretches we are!

Not this in-between thing that Levi had, where his brain could catch the words but couldn't hold on to them.

Diplomacy is to do and say The nastiest thing in the nicest way.

Life is about enjoying yourself and having a good time.

A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.

I would encourage the next commander in chief to be more cooperative and communicative with Congress, particularly when entering a conflict.

It's very ugly' I said generously. 'But it looks as though it would laugh at snow. And, if you hit a deer it would hiccup, and keep going.

It is easier to argue that something nobody believes in actually exists than it is to argue that something everybody believes in is unreal.

I definitely shut down sometimes. I always just go into my own little cocoon and write, and I surround myself with as much music as possible.

You have to be true to what you believe in and do your duty.