They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 100 per cent human, that we're always letting ourselves down. We're constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment.

You don't need a Harvard MBA to know that the bedroom and the boardroom are just two sides of the same ballgame.

You are who you are when nobody's watching.

As I say I don't want to kill myself, I just wouldn't mind dying.

Estate agents: like them or loathe them, you'd be mad not to loathe them.

The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.

People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t

Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word's full octave.

Wine can be a better teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books

Nothing in this world is at it seems. Except, possibly, porridge.

All the big words -virtue, justice, truth, ...- are dwarfed by the greatness of kindness

Growing older doesn't mean that you are more mature than everyone who is younger than you. Maturity is a lot of things, and age has nothing to do with it.

Only dead leaves allow the wind to blow them to and fro.

In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only.

In Lebanon, there was an agreement not to liquidate Yasser Arafat. In principle, I'm sorry that we didn't liquidate him.

I have memories of clouds whisking by while sitting in the pushchair on the roof of my parents' flat. I loved it! I just loved staring at the clouds and dreaming away.

All in all I learned a lesson from it though. You never see it coming you just get to see it go.

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting.

I think for some reason people are drawn to stories of all kinds, for some reason they land harder when they are "true." And yet in fiction, I think there is a lot of deeper truth, too.

Looks to me, Vince, like you hit a hole in one.