“One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.”

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.

When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.

There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.

Those who divorce aren’t necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

I have never supported amnesty, and I led the fight against Chuck Schumer’s gang of eight amnesty legislation in the Senate.

I have been proud to fight and stand for religious liberty, to stand against Planned Parenthood, to defend life for my entire career.

The negro has suffered far more from the commission of this crime against the women of his race by white men than the white race has ever suffered through his crimes.

If you want a candidate who is led the fight against Obamacare, who will lift the burdens on small businesses and bring back jobs, I’m the only candidate in the race with that proven record.

If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty.

The doors of churches, hotels, concert halls and reading rooms are alike closed against the Negro as a man, but every place is open to him as a servant.

We can’t win – if we nominate someone – if we nominate someone that half of the Republican Party hates, we’re going to be fighting against each other all the way to November [of 2016]. We will never win that way.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.