"It's not about composition. It's the way you feel about how your objects should relate to each other. I've got lots of African statues and things, and the cleaner arranges them like soldiers, which drives me mad. So I have to rearrange them, and I must drive her mad, because I'm doing anarchy and she's doing military manoeuvres."

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading."

"I was surrounded by strong women so it had never even occurred to me that women were anything other than equal to men."

"The trouble with people like Tony Blair is they get confused, they think intelligence is education when they're two different things."

"Genius always finds itself a century too early."

"The spark of ambition becomes a blaze of accomplishment only through disciplined persistence. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history."

"Every scar carries the quiet memory of a battle faced and survived. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Kindness is the invisible thread that binds all kindred spirits together. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history."