Something I didn't even know was on my bucket list has been achieved. I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner with Martha Stewart. I vow to follow the gospel of her teachings and do my very best in the remarkably less glamorous kitchen of my own home... without the luxury of magically appearing prep bowls filled by a staff of sous chefs.

I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.

What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far far from it but there is no free lunch as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble.

My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It's just not December without that movie in my house.

Close your bodily eye that you may see your picture first with the eye of the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness that its effect may work back from without to within.

The things that have always been important: to be a good man to try to live my life the way God would have me to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life to do my work without looking back to give it all I've got and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.

Authority doesn't work without prestige or prestige without distance.

Hard work without talent is a shame but talent without hard work is a tragedy.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact than the richest without meaning.

Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.