I was walking across King's Cross station when a drunken Irishman came stumbling up and flung his arms around me. He wanted to thank me for the peace process in Northern Ireland.

I cannot bear the language TV chefs use - they don't seem able to look at a plate of vegetables without accusing it of sexual activity.

My cat did that the other day when he came in from the garden.

I think the rest of the world will think we're made, and indeed we are. We've turned out the greatest Prime Minister in the post war years simply because of short term nerves.

In politics there is no right answer - and no final answer.

For years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England's compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn't care if something is unpopular.

The instant you say All Quiet On The Western Front people remember that great 20th century classic book on war, a book about a school boy turned into a soldier overnight.

I stay on terra firma: the more firm, the less terror.

The abuse of children is the worst offence that anybody can commit.

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.

You create silent enemies by revealing how much God had blessed you.

To one bent on age, death will come as a release. I feel this quite strongly now that I have grown old myself and have come to regard death like an old debt, at long last to be discharged.

I love a lot of people in bands and people doing weird art stuff, but i will always forget someone and i don't really want to be part of stamping the boundaries on a scene.

Tenderness is total love, whereas justice is only a part of love, though it believes itself, mistakenly, to be the whole.

They let you dream just to watch them shatter, you're just a step on the boss man's ladder.

If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it. If we practice and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the wholeworld will be blind and toothless.

One lesson of Sept. 11 is that a government that tries to do everything is likely to do most of it badly.

Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.