The thing that interests me most about family history is the gap between the things we think we know about our families and the realities.

Marriage is like the witness protection programme: you get all new clothes, you live in the suburbs, and you're not allowed to see your friends anymore.

It seems a shallow observation, but... the Tory Conference are not an attractive lot, are they? I mean, if all those people were born in the same village, you'd blame pollution, wouldn't you?

My daughter wanted a new pair of trainers. I told her You're eleven, make your own!

The Afghan War has clearly reached a stage similar to that moment at your child's party where you realise you've forgotten to give the other parents a pick up time.

The only way you can ever accuse a Conservative of hypocrisy is if they walk past a homeless person without kicking him in the face.

You can inherit male-pattern baldness from your mother's father, but not a tendency to fight in the First World War.

Northern Ireland is part of Ireland, not Britain, as can clearly be seen from aerial photographs.

Most harm is done by people who are awake.

Capitalism is a great idea in theory, but in practice it just doesn't work.

Why don't people just accept that life is sad and cheer up? After all, it's not going to last for ever.

I don’t want to blend, ” Etalon whispered. “I want to belong.

Not since Cassandra Wilson's Blue Light Til Dawn has a vocalist cast such an entrancing spell as Valerie Joyce does on New York Blue.

The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.

No, I'm the infamous Edward Teller.

Very well. You may help me exterminate the Society of Wizards.

My mother has become my daughter and I've become her guardian.

It's not always clear where a healthy patriotism shades into a dangerous nationalism.

The beauty of artifacts is in how they reassure us we’re not the first to die.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

No man is esteemed for colorful garments except by fools and women.