We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality.

Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

What can art really do in the face of atrocity?

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.

Nations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.

But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.

a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime

The well of salvation is gospel of Jesus Christ, the Saviour.

If someone leaves you, don't be depressed. They just did not deserve you. And always remember, "Whatever happens, happens for the best".

This is a new nonnegotiable: to feel safe, you have to be connected.

In Aleppo we had the missile itself, and the material, and the sample from the sand, from the soil, and samples from the blood [of chemical weapons].

Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience.

Geniuses are justifiably contemptuous of the opinions of their inferiors.

Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable altogether.

I'm at the top of my game so, when I win or lose, I don't freak out...I don't think we can call it a rivalry yet. There's just to many great players around.

Fashion Week is surprisingly very short. At least the actual runway shows are.