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

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.

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.

Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes.

But what had really happened? It was still unclear. Was it possible nothing of any significance had ever happened between us and our ending was just the sad process of realizing this?

It was a love that was not a contract but an affection of the soul.

The Perfect Gentlemen are perfectly delightful, musically superb and thoroughly entertaining.

People always say, 'A good man is hard to find.' You've never heard that about women, have you?

When you stop caring about something, then other people have to decide whether or not they genuinely care about you, or not.

I hadn't done anything in six years; I was just vegetating.

Don't be afraid to do the most insane thing. Don't think it's too crazy. Just go for it.

It doesn't matter if you mean to do the right thing - if you only do bad things. You need to learn how to do right things. Doing is what affects people.

My lifelong friend and mentor Frank Barsalona is gone. And the music business as we knew it went with him.