The tragedy of 9/11 galvanised the American superpower into action, leaving us in Europe divided in its wake.

There is no consensus even today on the merits of Napoleon - and certainly no agreement on the rights and wrongs of the origins of the First World War.

Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.

It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.

History provides no precise guidelines.

But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.

We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.

We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgment on the past.

I had tried to express myself, but couldn't do that because I was afraid that it will hurt someone. I never knew that not expressing myself hurt myself.

The Balkanization of the media means that nobody is having a single conversation with a single set of agreed-upon facts and assumptions the way you had as recently as the 90s.

You're not looking for the Rolls Royce and the big fancy trailer. Those are supposed to be the byproducts of having fun and then getting good at what you do.

I don't dig parties. I rather sit at home with my friends and a good movie.

A lot of people take shots at news channels.

Its never right to fight terror with terror.

I believe that kids as well as adults are entitled to books of no socially redeeming value.

Someone's been mean to you! Tell me who it is, so I can punch him tastefully.

A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.

I don't have a big hang-up about my body.