People think they have to be ambitious. But at a certain age, all you want is to be around nice, decent people.

Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from - dare I say it - God.

You know, I used to warm the thermometer on the light bulb... I was really good at being sick. I could forge my mother's signature on a sick note so well I was hardly ever at school.

Stationery is addictive. I get mine made in Paris at Benetton, and writing on it gives me a strange thrill.

Many men think they're playboys but they invariably land wide of the mark. Surrounding yourself with champagne, fast friends and paid escorts is the very definition of the word 'loser'.

Water-boarding can result in damage to the lungs and the brain, as well as long-term psychological trauma.

I think the absence of socks on men wearing suits and brogues is a problem. They'll live to regret that.

As you get older and fatter, good clothes can hide a lot.

In less than a year, the Bush administration will strut out of office, leaving the country in roughly the same condition a toddler leaves a diaper.

Life is all about seating and lighting.

I might wear a dinner jacket once a year to our Oscar party - that's a big thing - but I don't go to parties. I'm social but I'm not a socialite person.

There are other beings live in between interval rhythms of our consciousness.

It seemed like all the way to tomorrow and over it to the days beyond.

There isn't anything you can't make run a little better, a little faster, a little smoother, if you take the time to analyse it and component-split the processes.

I had a very funny and depressing talk with my seventy-four-year-old mother. I decided, she doesn't have a bucket list - she has a kick-the-bucket list.

We use only 10% of our brains... Imagine how smart we would be if we used the other 60%!

Finland has produced so many brilliant distance runners because back home it costs $2.50 a gallon for gas.

The strong grows in solitude where the weak withers away.

The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.

I'll never know what it was he wanted me to remember.

And then the screaming begins.