We're taking part in a divine comedy and we should realise that the play is always a comedy, in that we're all ultimately ridiculous.

As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it.

If you can't get a job as a pianist in a brothel, you become a royal reporter.

People who get on at school are the ones who play by the rules, and no one's going to get far in later life playing by the system.

The only redemptive feature of war is the brotherhood which it forges.

A Tory government with a decent mandate seems the only hope of tackling the fiscal catastrophe responsibly.

You cannot write down how people are good; you just know it, and cannot get away from it.

Lots of us when we're children believe 'oh well, if the world knew us as we really are, they'd know what wonderful, clever, brilliant, charming people we really are.'

It's miraculous how much easier the computer has made my sort of work.

I would have been a disastrous soldier.

When I am fishing, I think quite a lot about the fish, but I also think about the book I'm writing.

Trust is the most important thing between husband and wife. If you cannot trust your husband with your heart, your life, or your love, nothing else matters.

I dare us to give up – maybe we’ll reach nirvana by the time we’re sixty.

Today, few terrorist organizations still employ the 'al-Qaeda model' in which individuals travel to terrorist training camps overseas and then are deployed to the West to inflict atrocities.

If you worry about what other people think of you, then you will have more confidence in their opinion than you have in your own.

But I'm always trying to plan ahead too and in doing so, and in working on this album, I've met a lot people that I hope to be involved with, on their records and in their situations.

We must care to think about the unthinkable things, because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.

Art is a reflection of everything that impacts your life.

The only hero known to my childhood was Henry Clay.

I'd rather be weird and happy than normal and miserable.

Pursue something so important that even if you fail, the world is better off with you having tried.