"The very act of questioning whether you exist proves you do, because you must be there for the doubt to be entertained in the first place."

"The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success."

"Christmas is a rare occasion when we are reminded that we have obligations to people we did not choose to be related to, and that love is not just a spontaneous feeling but something we sometimes really have to work at, with people we may not even much like."

"I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible."

"I don't keep up with Twitter all day long."

"Misery is almost always the result of thinking."

"As far as Zarqawi is concerned, there is a network of extremists; it's not just Zarqawi."

"It's so warm now, and Thanksgiving came so early - is it just me, or does it not really feel like Ramadan?"