The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness.

We're terrible at realising what goes on in other people's heads because we are trapped inside our own.

Have your cake and eat it... there's no other reason to have a cake

I control the conditions so my testers become my testees.

To impress people as much as we would wish, we would first need to successfully adopt each of their value systems

...there is a fine line between wishing to produce child-like astonishment and treating people like infants.

The desire to impress is an efficient means of bringing out one’s least impressive qualities.

We forget our health and comfort and notice a pinching shoe. Much of living well is detaching from our boring stories of pain and shifting focus

Magic is a performance, and a performance should have an honesty, a relevance and a resonance if it is to be offered to spectators without insulting them.

I am often dishonest in my techniques ... I happily admit to cheating, it's all part of the game. I hope some of the fun for the viewer comes from not knowing what's real and what isn't

Dull magic is a collection of tricks: great magic should sting.

We spend most of the time justifying the situation and not finding the real problem thus leaving minimal chance of solutions.

I saw her disappear from my life like a star that fades into obscurity behind a veil of clouds.

This is the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be shut, the door of the priest should always be open.

Newfoundland is a great English ship moored near the Banks during the fishing season for the convenience of the English fishermen.

Pale death, with impartial step, knocks at the hut of the poor and the towers of kings. [Lat., Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres.]

If you're not convinced, how can you convince others?

If I even lose my glasses or make a mistake. I become really disappointed in myself.

I've just been writing a column about the way in which Fallujah and New Orleans are looking to be twin towns in effect. They're both been worked over by the Bush Administration.

All drugs are poisons the benefit depends on the dosage.

A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned ... if only to justify itself for making their life a hell.