"Character is incredibly jagged, and incredibly contextualized, even to the point where I still feel uncomfortable thinking about it."

“It's a waste of time to think that if you colored a painting red what might have happened if you painted it black.”

Source : "Super trouper" by Gareth McLean, www.theguardian.com. October 5, 2006.

“I believe in the institution of marriage, and I intend to keep trying till I get it right.”

“I have come to understand that the self, my self, is inherently sacred. By virtue of its own improbability, its own miracle, its own emergence ... And so I lift up my head, and I bear my own witness, with affection and tenderness and respect. And in so doing, I sanctify myself with my own grace.”

“A painter with prestige among painters is bound to be discovered sooner or later.”

“I am really inspired when I am in an experience, at the front lines of conservation, and I see someone - a woman, a man, a child, a person - who has given up an opportunity to have a family, an opportunity for financial riches, even an opportunity for security, [to] put their whole life on the line to protect a species.”

“Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.”

“In the past, the U.K. got away with selling things that weren't unusual. Now it's no use trying to export without having something that's unusual and better.”

“You cannot even begin to understand contemporary African politics if you have not read this fascinating book”