And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Meddey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death.

He had pulled out of that grief, eventually – out from under the suffocating weight of it. Suffering had formed him: made him silent and deliberate, thoughtful: deep.

50% of all facts are false and the other half are just made up

A liar is always lavish of oaths.

One does not have to stand again the gale. One yields and becomes part of the wind.

If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.

The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have not legitimacy.

The camera is an eye that sees and records the lives of filthy people. Its pictures are hung in museums and published in thick books that future generations can see how horrible life was.

I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.

I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil. (Ego baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli.)

Anti-drug fanatics and cops are the criminals - it's like McCarthyism. They need someone to dislike to distract the public from the really important problems.

Our children are the rock on which our future will be built, our greatest asset as a nation