Openness about death has led to greater care about all aspects of dying.

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions crippling enough to prevent them living normal lives.

So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime.

Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust of women's bodies.

There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.

The strongest predictor of unhappiness is anyone who has had a mental illness in the last 10 years. It is an even stronger predictor of unhappiness than poverty - which also ranks highly.

This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition.

Most people come to fear not death itself, but the many terrible ways of dying.

Crime is only the worst example, but it is a paradigm for other Labour policy disasters. No one tells the voters that crime is falling: let them stay scared senseless.

Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

My friend made me a leather dress for the MTV awards. It gives you confidence, wearing something you love.

I want to be good at what I do, obviously, and to do that I need to keep my head straight.

I like to imagine that the Neanderthals were all really good artists.

It's not easy to deal with the negativity in the world but it's something that's got to be done. Your success and life are so important that you must surround yourself with a positive support team.

When the mind no longer sees itself as a body, forever in bondage to the body, the mind can be free and at peace even when we are physically sick.

I never admire another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

Dance when the moon sings, and don't cry about troubles that haven't yet come. (Moon Called)

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.