Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal.

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.

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

I don't want to die, but I don't want to be the only one to live, either. When I was sitting alone last night, I kind of figured maybe that's how Jesus felt.

But I'm not imaginative. I couldn't look into the future, like Star Wars or Robots or anything like that.

I pretty much know that directing means that you have to answer about a thousand questions every day and you have to answer them quick.

We share the earth not only with our fellow human beings, but with all the other creatures.

The horse has such a docile nature, that he would always rather do right the wrong, if he can only be taught to distinguish one from the other.

An armed man, especially if he is armed with a firearm, is dangerous as long as he is conscious. Take no chances. Put him out.

Any time there's a scandal, we always try and get involved.

I only notice the clothes I'm wearing.

For ocean, whale is a small fish; for wise man, small fish is an ocean! Sun, hides in the candle!

If something makes you happy in this world, you should think of what will happen to you if that thing were taken away.