One of the great failings of our education system is that we tend to focus on those who are succeeding in exams, and there are plenty of them. But what we should also be looking at, and a lot more urgently, is those who fail.

It's good to focus on the universal suffering that goes on in any war. Whatever the right and wrongs of the war, there is always universal suffering.

There's a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be?

But try as I might, I never got to eat any of her pastries, and do you know, she never even offered me one.

I can hate you more, but I'll never love you less.

My Albert married his Maisie Brown as he said he would. But I think she never took to me, nor I to her for that matter. Perhaps it was a feeling of mutual jealousy.

Any story you write about war, or film you make about war, is bound to be political whether you like it or not.