Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.

There is no consensus even today on the merits of Napoleon - and certainly no agreement on the rights and wrongs of the origins of the First World War.

Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.

History provides no precise guidelines.

But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.

We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.

We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgment on the past.

The tragedy of 9/11 galvanised the American superpower into action, leaving us in Europe divided in its wake.

I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.

Depression is not generalized pessimism, but pessimism specific to the effects of one's own skilled action.

I've always thought that men are more romantic than woman.

... America is the greatest humiliator in existence. It is always cultivating the power you get from humiliating others.

I've found that a person does not need protein from meat to be a successful athlete. In fact, my best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet.

The more psychotherapy, the smaller the recovery rate.

To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished.

When understanding would be too difficult, I become trusting.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be.

My closest friends in the league are Dirk Nowitzki and Rex Chapman. Although I think Michael Finley and I will be friends forever.