A lot of bad stuff in the world wasn’t really that bad until someone tried to change it.

While I was chained to a wall and being tortured, I realized, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

Slowly, desolately, the fist of what we'd done unclenched the clawed palm of what we'd become.

If we can't respect the way we earn it, money has no value. If we can't use it to make life better for our families and loved ones, money has no purpose.

Oh, of course, naturally, God is impossible. That is the first proof that he exists." Nothing exists as we see it. Nothing we see is really there, as we think we are seeing it. Our eyes are liars. Everything that seems real, is merely part of the illusion.

We have a saying in Marseilles: a man in no hurry gets nowhere fast. I have been in no hurry for eight years.

There is nothing so depressing as good advice, and I will be pleased if you do not inflict it upon me. Frankly, I am shocked at you. You must know this, surely? Some years ago I suffered such an offensively gratuitous piece of good advice that I was depressed for six months afterward. It was a very close call - I almost never recovered.