Greatness lies not in being strong but in the right using of strength and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me.

I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction obviously but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

There has to be chemistry in a duet but if you go beyond the point of friendship and attraction you lose something.

I remain optimistic. What we've seen in Europe and the rest of the world is that freedom has a much stronger attraction than radical fundamentalism.

I had a fear of becoming anything a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor but if you become a doctor that's your specialty in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open your field is the entire human condition.

Faith always contains an element of risk of venture and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.

I think that obviously there is a perverse attraction to a fundamentally changed world or the end of the world. There is a death wish a perverse death wish. Not just for ourselves not just for the movie 'Death Wish ' but for the end of all human life.

I'm comfortable only when there's a mutual attraction. That's what anyone wants. If I find out she's not attracted to me it brings down my level of attraction to her. If I'm interested and find out she's not I tend to cool off.

It is curious how from time immemorial man seems to have associated the idea of evil with beauty shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly fear while at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnotic attraction.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then by simply changing the key we keep up the attraction and vary the song.

Yes the companionship is amazing. You know you can get that physical attraction that happens is great but then there's an awful lot of time and the rest of the day that you have to fill.

I hope I'm not a tourist attraction - I'm sure that they come here really because St. Andrews is just amazing a beautiful place.