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.

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

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

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.

Spirituality is not about being fixed

Hold on to God, hold on to your visions and continue to develop them

The characters in Person of Interest are unique in incredible way.

Mindfulness, the aware, balanced acceptance of present experience, is at the heart of what the Buddha taught.

If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.

I always channeled what I felt emotionally into skiing - my insecurities, my anger, my disappointment. Skiing was always my outlet, and it worked.

Arguments only confirm people in their own opinions.

I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.

Being receptive to what is happening around me gives me inspiration and feeds my desire to create.

So I use a tape recorder a lot to record ideas.