Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.

The copycat effects of media violence, similar to those previously attributed to westerns, radio serials and comic books, are easy to exaggerate.

So, if falling crime rates coincide with the rise of violent video games and increasing violence on TV and at the cinema, should we conclude that media violence is causing the drop in crime rates?

Actually, I can't imagine anything more tedious than a perfect person, especially if it was someone who also demanded perfection from me.

I suspect the secret of personal attraction is locked up in our unique imperfections, flaws and frailties.

Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people.

The thing we need most is each other.

Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills.

It's Australian to do such things because, however uncivilised they may seem, it's human to do them.

One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives.

On average, Australians watch more than three hours of television a day, compared with 12 minutes a day spent by the average couple talking to each other.

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1, 000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

DeeDee had to have a firm grasp on reality. Yet she knew God was bigger than a pathology report. So she prayed.

Only the honorable people resist the injustices! The rest - the honorless - are afraid of even their own shadows!

The truth is for suckers, Johnny Boy!

In the best-case scenario, the audience sees themselves in your shoes. The only way you can do that is if you try to play it as if it was happening to you.

To believe in'the greater good' isto operate, necessarily, in a certain ethical suspension.

People must understand that people were beaten, arrested, jailed, and some people were murdered, while attempting to register to vote, or to get others to register to vote.

But you were Mine. My child. And I would not give you up.

People are really angry at Washington. And they have a right to be. It's why I ran in 2010, by the way.

In everything the middle course is the best; everything in excess brings trouble.