I see myself as a recovering journalist.

My feelings towards the newspapers are very affectionate.

Apparently when I went to school, I had a Glasgow accent.

One good thing about leaving daily journalism was that I was no longer obliged to read all the book prize short lists.

I am a print addict. I have an ebook and a computer but I remain hooked on print.

My father used to get me to read the newspaper to him, as if I was a radio. I would stand there and read the 'Times.

That's what I really wanted to do when I was 16, be in comics!

Dignity and pride are not only two different feelings, but, in some ways, opposites.You can step on your pride to preserve your dignity. You can destroy your dignity because of your pride.

Give someone who has faith in you a placebo and call it a hair growing pill, anti-nausea pill or whatever, and you will be amazed at how many respond to your therapy.

All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ, they all aim at the same end.

Nobody likes a whistler, particularly not the divinity that shapes our ends.

There is in the heart of woman such a deep well of love that no age can freeze it.

Humility is the gateway into the grace and the favor of God.

The Russians need to understand that you cannot have peace [in Syria] unless you resolve the question of Sunni buy-in.

We must always think about death, because death always thinks about us!

He was swept with a sadness, a sadness deep and penetrating, leaving him desolate like someone washed up on a beach, a lone survivor in a world full of strangers.

Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.