“Art, I subsequently realised, is like that. It softens by association and implication. It renders the hard pliable. It creates gaps, gaping holes really, in possibility.”

“And yet, in terms of its emotive potential, I still find art more attractive, currently, than books, which fail at a deeper level.”

“Sometimes the heart demands.”

“I regret, most of all, my shrivelled heart. So focused on the numbers. On the maths of my personal equation. Can a man change his heart? Are there ways to improve the spirit of who you are? Of why ...”

“The writers themselves … they were pitifully out of context. So self-assured, so assuming, so completely wrong. Unable – any of them – to imagine what might be coming.”

“We are, after all, human. There is something wild in those opposable thumbs.”

“We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy ... It's only through people making a stand against t...”

“Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts.”

“When we are surrounded by such diversity - in nature, in culture, in human spirit - how can we stand not to acknowledge it?”