I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.

I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language

Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars.

If you go looking for loonies and religious fanatics and dropouts and freaks, I dare say you'll find it.

Just as it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, it is the belief in shamefulness that is the root of all misery.

There's nothing worse than the British in one of their fits of morality.

Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.