After the collapse of Wall Street in the 1920s, the culture stopped being all about money, and the country survived and ultimately flourished.

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.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

I will not wear a tulle-tailed dunce cap for anyone or for any reason.

When the world is itself draped in the mantle of night, the mirror of the mind is like the sky in which thoughts twinkle like stars.

Those teetering on madness hold keys to doors you know nothing about. You must ask yourself if these rooms are worth visiting—if in the end life would have made more sense having been in them.

But I'm a big, firm believer in speaking everything into existence.

I want to understand how best to create and preserve a form of higher education that we value but that is in jeopardy for many reasons.

I find myself born into this particular position. I'm determined to make the most of it. And to do whatever I can to help. And I hope I leave things behind a little bit better than I found them.

I consider myself a student of Hollywood.

The easiest way of making money is to stop losing it.

Naps are a way of traveling painlessly through time into the future.