It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.

Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.