Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.

I had decided I wanted to write about food and I knew the only way to do that is to speak with authority which meant learning the language and knowing what that experience is like.

I read Freud's Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis in basically one sitting. I decided to enroll in medical school. It was almost like a conversion experience.

I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.

I felt alienated by the experience and decided to stay away from corporate employment.

Of two pleasures if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it that is the more desirable pleasure.

If merely 'feeling good' could decide drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

I joined the Labour party because I believed in equality in freedom of speech and in tolerance compassion and understanding for people irrespective of their background and views. In whatever I decide to do in the future I will hold to those principles.

I decided that now is the time to start doing the things that really interest me and I find important. It was in the 10 years of the MacArthur grant that I began working on my first book... and I began putting more work into environmental history.

What we're doing now is we're saying that individual schools can spend the money on their own priorities so that head teachers can decide what's truly important because the big shift in approach on education that we're taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.