Whatever age we are is the age we’ve always been.

Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from - dare I say it - God.

You know, I used to warm the thermometer on the light bulb... I was really good at being sick. I could forge my mother's signature on a sick note so well I was hardly ever at school.

Stationery is addictive. I get mine made in Paris at Benetton, and writing on it gives me a strange thrill.

Many men think they're playboys but they invariably land wide of the mark. Surrounding yourself with champagne, fast friends and paid escorts is the very definition of the word 'loser'.

Water-boarding can result in damage to the lungs and the brain, as well as long-term psychological trauma.

I think the absence of socks on men wearing suits and brogues is a problem. They'll live to regret that.

As you get older and fatter, good clothes can hide a lot.

In less than a year, the Bush administration will strut out of office, leaving the country in roughly the same condition a toddler leaves a diaper.

Life is all about seating and lighting.

I might wear a dinner jacket once a year to our Oscar party - that's a big thing - but I don't go to parties. I'm social but I'm not a socialite person.

Those who succumb to pain find weakness in emotion and strength in reason.

Youth is above all a collection of possibilities.

England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.

A feeling of confidence and personal power comes from facing challenges and overcoming them.

We have to be a state where business is welcome and jobs are created. We have to demand value for what is spent and we need to continue to resist a lottery.

Let's love, press your lips to mine. Let's kiss, for that thrill divine.

I'm unfortunately very verbose too often.

Drinking makes uninteresting people matter less and late at night, matter not at all.

Doing the Right Thing - Sometimes doing the right thing, is to do nothing at all.

Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.