I don't think at my age... you can start ruling people out in politics.

I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a council chamber in Europe

I have never read it. You should not waste your time.

I am sorry to upset my colleagues by saying we wasted four years in opposition, but if you do get so badly defeated as a party you do have to face up to some painful facts and you do have to change.

Energetic action on debt would make a radical difference to the prospects of many of the poorest countries in the world, at no practical cost to creditor countries.

I am certainly not a blogger. Quite a large proportion of them are nuts and extremists - with the honourable exception of the culture secretary.

I trust that whoever leads the Conservative Party actually pays regard to my advice on how we should conduct ourselves and I personally will obviously support whoever eventually wins.

The political health of Britain has deteriorated very sharply. The Conservative Party must do something about it. I am the man to do it.

It would be immoral to walk away from the consequences of our actions, leaving behind anarchy and civil war in Iraq.

Of course I'd have loved to be Prime Minister. But I'm not nursing a grievance.

However, we do not lack anti-terrorist laws. I do not believe that the recent London bombs were the result of any deficiencies in our legal system.

That's what friends should do. cherish the good and pretend not to notice the harmless rest.

Don’t you know that everything you do in life has consequences?

The story of his great-grandfather . . . was his own story, too.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

I think Angelina Jolie always looks amazing.

When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what you are doing...you are doing what you were meant to be doing.

Napster is essentially using the music to make money for themselves and that's the part that's both morally and legally wrong. That I think is more relevant than whether or not I'm losing money.

A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.

Physical beauty wasn't the same as True Beauty, any more than pretty ugly meant truly ugly or Magnetic North meant True North.

What have you done? What have you given up?' So many things, Cecily. More than you know.