She also said the wicked people needed love as much as good people and were much better at it.

Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.

You suffer from the oldest delusion in politics. You think you can change the world by talking to a leader. Leaders are the effects, not the causes of changes.

...there were certain chapters when I stopped writing, saw the domestic situation I was in and thought, "I don't want to face this world, let's get back to the hellish one I'm imagining.

I don't think anybody should read anything except for fun because you won't learn anything unless you enjoy it.

Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music hall song and a few bad novels.

Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having.

I ought to have more love before I die. I've not had enough.

I distrust speech therapy. Words are the language of lies and evasions. Music cannot lie. Music talks to the heart.

But I do enjoy words—some words for their own sake! Words like river, and dawn, and daylight, and time. These words seem much richer than our experiences of the things they represent—

Glasgow is still full of churches built in the last century. Half of them have been turned into warehouses.

Be disciplined and effective in your relationship with God

You can’t win unless you try to win, but you can lose by trying not to lose.

1337% of Pi ≈ 42

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

When you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak.

Rather than focus on the negative aspects of change, which is loss, I focus on the adventure of it and say "What's next?"

Hard work is not punishment. Hard work is the price of admission for the opportunity to reach sustained excellence

So many people choose silence after the immediate wake of a death out of fear of saying something out of turn or "bringing up bad memories" that bereaved people often feel forgotten.

All is as thinking makes it so

living in Los Angeles was like being an extra in a movie that was starring other people entirely.