As I was growing up, it was made clear that the fat me wasn't welcome, that a thin person was expected and awaited, and impatiently so.

The crushing, pitiful, and frequently just plain risible pathos of an unsuccessful actor/performer's life is well charted.

Both Plockton and the Isle of Muck in north-west Scotland are incredibly beautiful. Sadly, Plockton has been discovered by tourists because it's where they shot Hamish Macbeth.

If one's honest about it, spending time in a car with children is pretty ghastly.

Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.

My theory is that one needs to be loved completely, unconditionally, and unfettered by parental disapproval, if one is to get happily through life which, after all, presents its own hurdles.

My mother, father, stepmother and surrogate mother have all died of cancer; my best friend has got terminal cancer and at least five of my other friends have had cancer but survived it.

If there's one thing I know, it's this - everybody thinks somebody else is having a better life.

If you have any power at all from being popular, then you have a duty to help people out.

Does everyone turn into a truculent thirteen-year-old when they go home, or is it just me?

Statistically, if you have ever dieted you are extremely likely not only to regain any weight you lose, but to go on to gain even more. Dieting makes you fat.

Power is not powerful without wisdom.

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. Real love is simple, everyday kind of thing. A smile, a hug, an encouragement. Continuous love without effort.

I contemplate the impossible and achieve madness. This is my blessing. This is my curse. My heaven, my hell.

Perhaps the most important thing we can ever do in our lives is find a way to keep the wild-both the wild inside and the wild outside us-and tap into it.

I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.

Our farmers round, well pleased with constant gain, like other farmers, flourish and complain.

If we lose wilderness, we lose forever the knowledge of what the world was.

By nature I will find hope in everything. Even if it's the most incredibly hopeless situation or circumstance. That's just me... I'll never be able to see things any other way.

Inside that quietude there was the firmest of wills. [Bill Shawn] knew exactly what he wanted to do.

And man's little Life has Duties that are great, that are alone great, and go up to Heaven and down to Hell.