You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I’ve come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.

It’s a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on earth. It’s an interesting place to be. I recommend it.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

I would like to go back to Wales. I’m obsessed with my childhood and at least three times a week dream I am back there.

I feel that there are a few things in the world without cultural barriers.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

To be able to travel the world, especially to places I never thought I’d be… it’s really, you know, still fascinating for me.

I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Where ever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.

From when I was born to when I was 21, I never left Toronto. That’s why I’m such a city cat.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it – not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

I remember I was flying home to Los Angeles one day. I was talking to the woman next to me and the flight attendant tried to tell me I was sitting next to somebody that I should know. I didn’t recognize her but it ended up being Beyonce’s sister, Solange Knowles.

Instead of being critical of people in authority over you and envious of their position, be happy you’re not responsible for everything they have to do. Instead of piling on complaints, thank them for what they do. Overwhelm them with encouragement and appreciation!

I am confident I will set foot again in Tibet in my lifetime.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.

I think Pebble Beach is kind of a unique place on the planet.

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

Pop music will never be low brow.

I do get recognized, but I must say Edinburgh is a fantastic city to live if you’re well-known. There is an innate respect for privacy in Edinburgh people, and I also think they’re used to seeing me walking around, so I don’t think I’m a very big deal.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.

I hope to play until I’m, like, 38 or something, and that’s a lot of years in the game and a lot of travel and a lot of sacrifice on my family’s part.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

I’m a Bangalore boy.

At the end of the day, your fans are the people who support you in and out. And their opinions matter.

We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house.

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

One of the things that I have admired about India is the spiritualism of the people.

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

Paris ain’t much of a town.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

If you could take a subway from the suburbs in Boston, where I live, to downtown in 10 minutes, that improves your life over sitting in a traffic jam. People should see that.

I’m turned on by guys who are cultured. That’ll keep me intrigued. They don’t have to have a single degree, but they should speak other languages or know things about other parts of the world or history or certain artists or musicians. I like to be taught. I like to sit on that side of the table.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

There’s a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you’re self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn’t so easy in a car, and you can’t cover as much ground walking.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘