"The needs of the times will teach you what to do."

“At the moment people get on boats because they flee terror at home and believe the many years' long wait in UNHCR camps is not a valid option, especially if they have children in their care. After the Vietnam War, Australia took a larger humanitarian intake than at any other period in our history. The Australian community accepted that. They were told why we needed to do it, and why it was the only ethical decent policy that a wealthy advanced country should adopt.”

“It doesn't matter if it's a Republican or a Democrat. If you do the right policies, you get economic growth.”

“If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one,”

“For the first time ever, overweight people outnumber average people in America. Doesn't that make overweight the average then? Last month you were fat, now you're average - hey, let's get a pizza!”

“Instead, most colleges are studies in obsolescence.”

“A lot of times black actors get stuck in a box. They're up against a lot of limitations for the kind of films that they get approached about. It's easy to get stuck in a box and just be approached about nothing but urban films.”

“For me, my awakening came when I was kidnapped.”

Source : "The rebel without a cause". Interview with Sam Leith, www.theguardian.com. December 13, 2008.

“To be a head boy, you have to be very clever, you have to be a scholar, and I was never a scholar in any shape or form.”