In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating.

You judge a society by the decency of living of the weakest

Power, in a nutshell, is the ability to get things done, and politics is the ability to decide which things need to be done.

Unlike 'real relationships', 'virtual relationships' are easy to enter and to exit. They look smart and clean, feel easy to use, when compared with the heavy, slow-moving, messy real stuff.

Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves.

For one to be free there must be at least two.

You are a stranger, I am a stranger, we all remain strangers, and nevertheless we can like or even love each other.

The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers.

We belong to talking, not what talking is about... Stop talking - and you are out. Silence equals exclusion.

The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.

The value of other people is that they have something unique to offer.

People tell you to believe in yourself for your whole life, then call you arrogant when you begin taking their advice.

And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery…and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.

I don't need you to slay my dragons. I can perfectly do it on my own.

I grew up poor and used to look at people in big houses and thought they had everything. Then later on I looked at models in magazines and thought they had it all.

People think of science like somehow that's the answer, and that it's all about right answers, but science is a lens that we look at the world through.

I don't fear anybody... at all.

Great leaders are never too proud to learn.

I've always wanted to direct and as I grow and I get older and I get older I just want to let that evolve.

L.A. is a great place to write because you have a lot of space. I have a big office at home, I can leave the doors open. Flowers bloom all year. But it's unglamorous in all the right ways.

Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource.