All politicians are not the same. I've never felt that way. What is the same is that voters get very excited about new faces, like Clinton and Blair - and they have unrealistic expectations that the world will change overnight. A cynical old hand like myself knows that it won't.

Intelligence forbids tears.

My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother.

There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.

The world is only tolerable because of the empty places in it...when the world's filled up, we'll have to get hold of a star. Any star. Venus, or Mars. Get hold of it and leave it empty. Man needs an empty space somewhere for his spirit to rest in.

The older I get the more secrets I have, never to be revealed and this, I know, is a common condition of people my age. and why all this emphasis on kissing and telling? Kisses are the least of it.

September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.