People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.

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

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

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.