When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible, with nothing getting better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small, closer in - you know, a girl I've just met, or this song we're going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto - think small.

How easily this unthinking family love was forgotten.

It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.

When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion.

I think the Americans are dying to leave Iraq. I was against the war but longed for the fall of Saddam; the decision to go to war clearly was taken long before the matter reached the U.N., given its inevitability. I kept my fingers crossed for the emergence of democracy in Iraq even if that would mean victory for a man whose politics I have little sympathy with.

What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult?

What can it be about low temperatures that sharpens the edges of objects?