There are few more frustrating things in life than being told something that you already know but cannot admit to knowing.

The only good reason for swimming, so far as I can see, is to escape drowning.

I got born in the wrong family.

A sense of humor is regarded as a sign of mental health - apart from excessive punning, which is another matter entirely.

I am an idle devil. But at least I work at it.

Machines are the opium of the masses. If all the machines in England were thrown into the North Sea tomorrow, we should be back in the Garden of Eden. And the weather would probably improve.

But the fruit that can fall without shaking indeed is too mellow for me.

What brought mass innovation to a nation was not scientific advances - its own or others' - but 'economic dynamism': the desire and the space to innovate.

I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished

Radio is paid by advertising. They decide what songs to play that'll keep people listening. And that's what promoters and the Classic Rock people do.

If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.

....there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.

The Koran says that there can be no heaven for one who sheds the blood of an innocent neighbour.

Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it.

Sometimes you go through those phases where you take your parents for granted, but I really do appreciate everything my mother's done because I know I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her.

We wanted to step off our island and add the color of the third world. We got gold cigarette paper and stuck it around our teeth. We really did look like pirates and dressed to look the part.