Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart the excision of its memory.

There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy just allowing myself to tell jokes allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

The new freedom of expression brought by the Internet goes far beyond politics. People relate to each other in new ways posing questions about how we should respond to people when all that we know about them is what we have learned through a medium that permits all kinds of anonymity and deception.

But I don't think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can't create his own Interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that's written he becomes mechanical he has no freedom.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

My desire to curtail undue freedom of speech extends only to such public areas as restaurants airports streets hotel lobbies parks and department stores. Verbal exchanges between consenting adults in private are as of little interest to me as they probably are to them.

I keep telling myself to calm down to take less of an interest in things and not to get so excited but I still care a lot about liberty freedom of speech and expression and fairness in journalism.

Governments that block the aspirations of their people that steal or are corrupt that oppress and torture or that deny freedom of expression and human rights should bear in mind that they will find it increasingly hard to escape the judgement of their own people or where warranted the reach of international law.