Objects are better than text at conveying narrative

From the point where our ancestors started making tools, people have been unable to survive without the things they make; in this sense, it is making things that makes us human.

For many, the icon of the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone, that administrative by-product of the Greek imperial adventure in Africa.

Objects let you tell a narrative that encompasses everybody. Texts don't.

For a million years the sound of making handaxes provided the percussion of everyday life. Anyone choosing a hundred objects to tell a history of the world would have to include a handaxe.

[The Persian Empire] left a dream of the Middle East as a unit, and a unit where people of different faiths could live together.

In the world of the Middle East at the moment, the debates are shrill. But ... the wisest voice of all of them may well be the voice of this mute thing, the Cyrus cylinder.

In 1600, when Shakespeares audience at the Globe heard Hamlet for the first time, every one of them knew very well what it meant to be handed a cup of wine by a figure of authority and told to drink.

To shine your brightest light is to be who you truly are.

In the Seventies, my children played in the street, read politically incorrect stories, ate home-cooked food and occasional junk and, yes, were sometimes smacked.

Years of living in the hope that what you'll get will be better than what you have. Years of looking and feeling worse in the hope that you might look better.

I'd hate to have a job where I had to be rude to people.

Your smile brightens the lives of all who see it.

Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State.

I was an optimistic person, really bossy, gregarious and outspoken.

Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all.

I don't know if you've ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for thousands of years. Or just not exist.

If every day in the life of a school could be the last day but one, there would be little fault to find with it.