I have learned that the cost of everything from a royal suite to a bottle of soda water can be halved by the simple expedient of saying it must be halved.

Somebody must trespass on the taboos of modern nationalism, in the interests of human reason. Business can't. Diplomacy won't. It has to be people like us.

There, carried high on a bank of clouds, hovers a shape, a triangle in the sky. This is the Holy Mountain Athos, station of a faith where all the years have stopped.

Herat, 8 December. What a day it was! God save me from any more adventures on a drained stomach.

All tragedies are finished bya death, All comedies are ended bya marriage; The future states of both are left to faith.

All present life is but an interjection, An'Oh!'or 'Ah!'of joy or misery, Or a 'Ha! ha!'or 'Bah!'a yawn or 'Pooh!' Of which perhaps the latter is most true.

But after being fired at once or twice, The ear becomes more Irish, and less nice.

The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

Failure is a signpost on the trail to success

Whenever the lion fish in the fish tank in the captain's ready room died it was always a sad moment.

All the greatest achievements of mind have been beyond the power of unaided individuals.

I believe that our deepest pain is often the path to our highest purpose.

We're afraid to move on, that's why there's so much nostalgia on the internet... 'cause we don't wanna look forward, that's scary.

By the end of the week, if I'm still alive, I get to write whatever I want about it all.

I guess it wasn't everyday they see a yellow lifeboat with no engine going a hundred knots an hour, manned by three kids.

I can't ever remember not wanting to be a scientist.

Fear and prejudice put up a terrible fight when they sense change coming.

I'm an audience member first. My inspiration is still based on hunger. Often, when people try to tell me "nobody wants that story; I'm like bullshit because I want it."