In the future instead of striving to be right at a high cost it will be more appropriate to be flexible and plural at a lower cost. If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.

When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.

The future is called 'perhaps ' which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.

We must welcome the future remembering that soon it will be the past and we must respect the past remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.

I think one of the basic tasks in life - one of the nice things we can do for each other - is to take things that are horrible and scary and make them acceptable and less frightening and if possible funny. It feels great to succeed at that.

It is possible in this world to be pretty and funny and successful all at the same time.

This is the great thing about Northern Ireland. I walk down the street and people stop me and say things like 'I know you. You're that wee golfer aren't you?' I say 'Yeah that's me.' They say 'Keep it up wee man.' It's very funny and that's why I want to stay here as long as possible.

Life is funny and it is interesting how we make it as serious as possible.

You know how it is with writing. You just write what you want to write. There's no way to predict what is good or bad. You just do what you think is funny and either it works or you're finished. It's impossible to predict anything.