There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.

It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.

Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future.

The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves.

It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.

The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead. I have watched others since I watched my father, and always with a sense of their strangeness. They sit and speak, and are spoken to, and listen, and even smile, but in spirit they have already moved away from us and there is no way we can enter their shadowy no-man’s-land.