When I meet people who say - which they do all of the time - 'I must just tell you my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest ' and so forth I switch off quite early.

Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.

A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated enriched heart.

Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul as clemency and readiness to forgive.

The morning after my high-school graduation found me up early job hunting. The dream of college I put on the back burner.

I teach one semester a year and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.

I clearly believe a lot more than some of my coalition colleagues - Tories - in redistribution and using the tax system for that purpose. I also believe in the government having an active role in the economy which is having an industrial strategy. I'm not a believer in laissez-faire.

Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out they've redlined it. Clearly to break up the redlining process there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk.

President Obama's call for nearly a half-trillion dollars in more government stimulus when America has more than $14 trillion in debt is guided by his mistaken belief that we can spend our way to prosperity.

This administration in Washington that's in power now clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need but it's the most qualified to make the most central decisions for every American in every area.