“90% of the divorces are initiated by women. That is really odd. Why? What’s going on? What’s the great discontent at the heart of it?”

We’re looking at the singular condition of poverty. All the other individual problems spring from that condition… doesn’t matter if it’s death, aid, trade, AIDS, famine, instability, governance, corruption or war. All of that is poverty.

And whereas women had to fight to find their way into the workforce, men are now fighting to reclaim their place in the family structure.

So when I got to 50 I just thought, Hold on: I’m thin. I’ve got my hair. I’m well off. I survived, you know

They thought they were Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall. In fact, they were more like Tom and Jerry

But if somebody dies, if something happens to you, there is a normal process of depression, it is part of being human, and some people view it as a learning experience etc.

It’s really very simple, Governor. When people are hungry they die. So spare me your politics and tell me what you need and how you’re going to get it to these people.

Human progress depends on unreasonable people. Reasonable people accept the world as they meet it; unreasonable people persist in trying to change it.

I don’t think anyone sets out to malign poor people but certainly that’s what we do through organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

I’m sure I’m very difficult to live with because of my make-up and personality.

When I hit 11 so did the careers of Dylan and the Stones. A year later it was the Who and the Kinks.

You cannot even begin to understand contemporary African politics if you have not read this fascinating book

Blair has called Africa ‘a scar on our conscience’. It is more. It is the gaping wound of the world’s soul.

Rock and Roll is instant coffee.

Men who are not given any voice in this because of the secret nature of the courts, what they’re left with is dressing up ridiculously, but at least using humour to try and draw attention to their kids

Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me

Certainly, I think being depressed is absolutely part of the human condition, it has to be, if there’s joy there’s its opposite, and it’s something you ride if you possibly can.

This seems quite good, a bit familiar.’ Then I realise … It’s one of my movies. It’s a pretty odd feeling.

I’m Scottish first, and it’s odd to hear that I’m a Scottish-American.

But in truth, life turns out to be more like the patchwork cloths-bits and pieces, odds and ends-people, places, things we never expected, never wanted, perhaps.

But I think it’s a good thing. Some people thought that it was an odd career arc, but to me it made absolute sense.

I have an odd fetish with nails.

The odds and ends of your mental surplus you carelessly throw at the world, one wants to be at a loss, in a maze; amazed, and amazingly unabashed.

When you’re picking a basketball team, you’ll take the brother over the guy with the yarmulke. Why? Because you’re playing the odds.

The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped.