This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.

We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.

When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you're suffering in.

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.

Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.

Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.

The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.

What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.

The light shines brighter on our path.

It is very strange that the years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.

Progress means simplifying, not complicating

You should write, write, write every day, and learn to edit and pare it right back so you're proud of every sentence, and each one is either being useful or beautiful, but hopefully both.

Bush said the unemployment situation is turning around. Last week alone, 5,000 people started working for John Kerry.

Whatever new arrangements are enacted for the Eurozone, they must work fairly for those inside it and out.

My feeling is the moment the theatre is not full you have to do something else. But most people somehow think 'If we did it better, they would come'. No. They don't come.

I suppose I do get sad, but not for too long. I just look in the mirror and go, 'What a f***ing good-looking f*** you are.' And then I brighten up.

Really, I just love doing comedy. Any form it takes is great, as long as I can keep doing it, you know? If I can do my show and 'The League' while also getting to do other bits, that's awesome.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.