I open with a clock striking to beget an awful attention in the audience - it also marks the time which is four o clock in the morning and saves a description of the rising sun and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere.

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa in the late 1950s I thought what a wonderful marriage this was biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.

I come from Montana and in eastern Montana we have a lot of dirt between light bulbs. It is expensive trying to bring the new technologies to smaller schools to upgrade their technologies to take advantage of distance learning.

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.

The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership they're quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the streets of Britain.

Sometimes I even now feel like a stranger in my country. But I knew there would be problems because I had seen the world as a skater. And now? A lot of people in eastern Germany have lost jobs rents went up food costs went up unemployment went to 20 percent. Freedom is good but it is not easy.

Well we lost a lot of our independence already. We are dependent on China for credit. We are dependent on Middle Eastern countries for energy supplies. And many Americans are dependent on the government for their income health care education of their children food stamps.

Overcoming the Cold War required courage from the people of Central and Eastern Europe and what was then the German Democratic Republic but it also required the steadfastness of Western partner over many decades when many had long lost hope of integration of the two Germanys and Europe.

I know a lot of Eastern Europeans and because of what they have been through and what they have seen they have an attitude where they are not easily fooled.

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s and into my 30s I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.