It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

I'm taking one thing at a time. With the children and launching my solo career it would drive me to a nervous breakdown if I tried to organise a wedding on top of that.

In my 50s I'll be dancing at my children's weddings.

Never advise anyone to go to war or to get married. Write down the advice of him who loves you though you like it not at present. He that has no children brings them up well.

The surrealists and the modern movement in painting as a whole seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai.

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi raise aphids as livestock launch armies into war use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies capture slaves engage in child labour exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

I am an opponent of Saddam Hussein but an opponent also of the sanctions that have killed a million Iraqi children and an opponent of the United States' apparent desire to plunge the Middle East into a new and devastating war.

No one ever said that fighting the war against terrorism and defending our homeland would be easy. So let's support our troops law enforcement workers and our mission to keep our nation and our children safe in the days and years to come.

Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.