My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; weve become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.

If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.

Most people want nothing to happen. That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle.

Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realize how widespread envy was.

But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?

Botswana is actually very peaceful. It's democratic. It never was in debt. They've been fortunate, they've had diamonds.

The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.