When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need.

Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up.

Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.

The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.

I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.

What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.

Today, much of journalism and politics are in a kind of collusion to oversimplify and personalize issues. No room for ambivalence. Plenty of room for the personal attack.

Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.

Our 'mistakes' become our crucial parts, sometimes our best parts, of the lives we have made.

Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.

I scream for everything that has gone wrong. I scream for everything broken in our lives.

We assume that anything that is new to us is new to human society as a whole, and that if we don’t see it reflected in history textbooks and in recent memory then it cannot have existed for long.

I wonder if they were aware of the power of complimentary alcohol during World War I.

I had become Harry Potter. Except I was thirteen and not magic, and my destiny, whatever it was, held no profound purpose.

We need to believe in a bright, compelling and sustainable future. Fear neither motivates people long-term nor brings out the best in them. Hope is a powerful motivator.

A bomb fell on Italy. It slid off!

Your divine mate already exists. When you get to the place in yourself that is peaceful divine love, your true mate will be revealed.

The miniatures of the Mughal period are really the pinnacle of Indian artistic achievement. And not a single one of those paintings is done by an individual artist.

it is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.