I sometimes wonder how we spent leisure time before satellite television and Internet came along…and then I realise that I have spent more than half of my life in the ‘dark ages’!

Perhaps no other year before or since 1984 has been awaited with such eager anticipation.

If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.

I will not be afraid because I understand ... And understanding is happiness.

That's one of those meaningless and unanswerable questions the mind keeps returning to endlessly, like the tongue exploring a broken tooth.

Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?

. . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.