You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.

Father told me that if I ever met a lady in a dress like yours, I must look her straight in the eyes.

The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine is like the celebrated tower of Pisa - slightly off balance.

Do you seriously expect me to be the first Prince of Wales in history not to have a mistress?

I learned the way a monkey learns - by watching its parents.

I believe passionately that everyone has a particular God-given ability.

I sometimes wonder if two thirds of the globe is covered in red carpet.

Something as curious as the monarchy won't survive unless you take account of people's attitudes. After all, if people don't want it, they won't have it.

You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.

All the time I feel I must justify my existence.

Hong Kong has created one of the most successful societies on Earth.

We would never comment on private correspondence.

I'd rather go by bus.

Your greatest achievement is to love me.

That's called a microphone. It's a big sausage that picks up everything you say - and you're starting early.

As you may possibly have noticed from time to time, I have tended to make a habit of sticking my head above the parapet and generally getting it shot off for pointing out what has always been blindingly obvious to me.

Christianity was literally born in the Middle East, and we must not forget our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ.

I have for some time now been deeply troubled by the growing difficulties faced by Christian communities in various parts of the Middle East. It seems to me that we cannot ignore the fact that Christians in the Middle East are increasingly being deliberately targeted by fundamentalist Islamist militants.

It is baffling, I must say, that in our modern world we have such blind trust in science and technology that we all accept what science tells us about everything - until, that is, it comes to climate science.

Perhaps it has been too uncomfortable for those with vested interests to acknowledge, but we have spent the best part of the past century enthusiastically testing the world to utter destruction; not looking closely enough at the long-term impact our actions will have.

There's nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something.

We're busily wrecking the chances for future generations at a rapid rate of knots by not recognizing the damage we're doing to the natural environment, bearing in mind that this is the only planet that we know has any life on it.

It is frightening how dependent on drugs we are all becoming and how easy it is for doctors to prescribe them as the universal panacea for our ills.

Theres nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something.

Organic farming has been shown to provide major benefits for wildlife and the wider environment. The best that can be said about genetically engineered crops is that they will now be monitored to see how much damage they cause.

Fast food may appear to be cheap food and in the literal sense it often is but that is because huge social and environmental costs are being excluded from the calculations.

Forests are the worlds air conditioning systemthe lungs of the planetand we are on the verge of switching it off.

I learned the way a monkey learns by watching its parents.

We are always searching for a cave to fit in.

There's a certain way people are used to seeing nude women, and that's in a submissive, coy pose, not looking at the camera. And in this poster, I'm looking dead into the camera with no expression on my face. I think it freaks a lot of people out.

A postsecondary education is the ticket to economic success in America.

You don't really know how your film is going to turn out, but you can give it your best shot and hope the audience loves it. This has been my approach right from the beginning, and it's helped me a lot in my journey. All you can do is give the film your everything.

Success is not only one thing. It's not only having a nice house in Beverly Hills and driving a nice Mercedes.

All nature's creatures join to express nature's purpose. Somewhere in their mounting and mating, rutting and butting is the very secret of nature itself.

I've heard stories about authors filled with this kind of Lotto-winner hubris. I'm a Dutch boy from the Midwest. We don't have hubris.

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.

I was 12 years old when I had my first job, delivering packages.

Holidays are about experiences and people, and tuning into what you feel like doing at that moment. Enjoy not having to look at a watch.

There are some people who are Burger King people, and there are some people who are McDonald's people.

We've tapped into a huge demand, and it's up to us to fulfill that demand and to be creative doing it.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

It's a funny thing: my name in Arabic means hope, so I suppose I have to live by that principle. Hope is desire, feeling, and investing in a projection of something that doesn't yet exist. At its best, you witness its alchemy in your life, turning something that was once in the mind into reality. At its worst, it's delusion.

I'm perpetually lonely.

The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.

I'm sure one reason I became an actor is my basic unwillingness to live one life.

Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.

I don't see my movies. I think it's healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I'm afraid to be disappointed.

Sometimes life gives us lessons sent in ridiculous packaging.

Metrics are not a device for restraining the mad, any more than 'open form' or free verse is a prairie where a man can do all kinds of manly things in a state of wholesome unrestrictedness.