Of one thing there is no doubt: if Paris makes demands of the heart, then Munich makes demands of the stomach.

It's very hard to self-motivate without someone standing over you snarling, ready to hurl the chalk at your head at the slightest slackening.

If there's anything worse than being 16, it's having parents visibly reliving their own teenage years in your anguished presence.

Without my Johnson trademark mop of yellow hair, I think I would be nothing.

I talk to bankers, distributors, marketing people. I used to sit at home in my tracksuit bottoms, and the real excitement of my day would be going out to get a copy of Private Eye and a latte.

Of course I'm naughty. I've always had to compete for attention, you see.

In Germany, salads are assemblies of ham and mayonnaise, not trendy tossed leaves.

When I'm called unkind... that really cuts to the quick. You can say anything else that you like about me.

Don't worry about never having time to write. Just write what you can in the time you do have and give yourself a big clap on the back, followed by a double latte and a blueberry muffin.

I do not think that having children - I have three teenagers - keeps you young. The reverse. It thrusts you into a full-frontal confrontation with your own all-too-obvious maturity.

I'm worried about looking like a bad person when, in fact, I try to be a good person. I don't like the public image that I've been dressed with and it worries me.

Art invariably grows out of a period when, in general, the artist admires his own nation and wants to win its approval.

If you experience bliss of the Self (samadhi) amidst complete problematic stage, then know that you have met a “Gnani Purush” [the enlightened one]!

Working away from my husband for long periods is good and bad. It stops us taking each other for granted and gives us space, but I miss him terribly.

Sometimes I think change is a good thing.

How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world.

Market society is a game where you win by making sure other people are better off with you than without you.

They are by far the worst drivers. They are spiteful, dithering, old and in the way. They should have their licences taken away.

Any time you throw pain at a Jackal without a clear present request, within a millisecond he'll jump in.

Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher's salary.

To mature is in part to realize that while complete intimacy and omniscience and power cannot be had, self-transcendence, growth, and closeness to others are nevertheless within one's reach.