It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.

I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

All your life, you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.

I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

Like almost everything else from the West, the Romantic Revolution arrived late in Russia.

Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very modern anger against anti-Semitism.

Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. But to me, the trick in life is to take that sense of generosity between kin, make it apply to the extended family and to your neighbour, your village and beyond.

It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable human rights, he did so on the ground that they had been endowed by God, our Creator.

It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life which underpins the idea of a just society.

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to take to writing anything.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

I think I give the impression of being a romantic, and I think inside I'm quite severe. But some might say they had the opposite impression of me.