Be led by your talent, not by your self-loathing; those other things you just have to manage.

The thing for me is, what if one returns to these maxims, these rather simplistic maxims "Be the change you want to see in the world." Because what canvas have we but the self for these kind of explorations, ultimately.

I do transcendental meditation, which is, I suppose, derived from Vedic or Ayurvedic principles, which is sort of Hindu principles.

As long as we prioritize material truths over spiritual truths we will live in tyranny because we are living an illusion

There's no biological reason why a man shouldn't just try to have sex with every woman he meets - all of them get pregnant and your genetics are winning.

For me happiness occurs arbitrarily: a moment of eye contact on a bus, where all at once you fall in love; or a frozen second in a park where it's enough that there are trees in the world.

My mate Karl once told me he’d been looking after this five-year-old boy who – not knowing enough to have an ironic inflection to his words – said, ‘I want something.’ He didn’t know what it was. Not ‘I want sweets’, or ‘a can of Coke’, or ‘to watch the Tweenies’, or whatever it is they’re into now (I like Bagpuss), but ‘I want something.’ All of us, I think, have that feeling. And what heroin does when you first start taking it is tell you what that something is.