“It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.”

One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.

Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.

A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.

But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.

Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.

I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.

What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this.

Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.

The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.

Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.

There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.

Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!

You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom.

Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?

It’s the one species I wouldn’t mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth.

In grasping at uncertainties we lost that which is certain.

We must also be certain that there is no one true faith or path by which it may spread.

Certain people always say we should go back to nature.I notice they never say we should go forward to nature.

And if it means you’re getting a certain amount of notoriety from a fight, that’s what you’ll do.

I think at this point, there’s a certain bizarre chemistry between Jamie [Hyneman] and I that we can’t ignore a lot of the mechanics of, that we’re quite aware of.

The authors I prefer are all very different and are not limited to certain genres or even certain time periods.

we’re finding that all these things can lead to people believing the world works in a certain way. I

I watched a lot of the James Bond movies, certainly, both the old ones and the reboot with Daniel Craig. I watched a lot of the Matt Helm films with Dean Martin, which just have these great car scenes where it’s rear-projected, and they just start making martinis out of a bar in the glove compartment.