To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.

If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end.

Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.

Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places.

When I was 14 a chaplain at school gave me a reading list. I read everything and I went back to him with a question: how can you really believe in this stuff?

And I say, the meaning of life is what you make it. There will be as many different meaningful lives as there are people to live them.

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.