Nothing keeps people together like the exalted conviction that they alone are to be spared that eternal anguish of hell fire to which everyone else will be condemned.

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.

literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry.

The only genuine hope of feminist liberation lies wth a vision of social change which challenges class elitism.

I think I am a pretty good judge of character in general and try to surround myself with the best people I can.

I never thought I'd get [a 'Pitch Perfect 2'] audition because the film was just so massive.

The problem [of climat changing] is only getting worse - that to me underscores that we need a transformative solution.

We need happy, productive citizens on our planet for us to survive.

Celebrate Life. Care for others and share whatever you have with those less fortunate than you. Broaden your vision, for the whole world belongs to you.

For writers from working-class families, the making of art is cultural disenfranchisement, for we do not belong in literary circles and our writing rarely makes it back home.

A tyrant is the worst disease, and the cause of all others.

I think Ray Charles did as much as anybody when he did his country music album. Ray Charles broke down borders and showed the similarities between country music and R&B.