I had a really wonderful upbringing. We were a tight family. It was wonderful to grow up with so many siblings. We were all just a year or two apart and we were always so supportive of each other. I learned everything from my older brother and sister and taught it to my younger sisters.

Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways women gambling and farming. My family chose the slowest one.

Where would you be without friends? The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends - your own chosen family. There's nothing like a really loyal dependable good friend. Nothing.

Our failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq thus far has been deeply troubling and our intelligence-gathering process needs thorough and unbiased investigation.

You may count on Mexico's support since your commitment to the noblest causes of mankind and your vast experience are and will be invaluable in enabling us together to achieve a better world.

If people choose to live their life in a way that does not confront the more troubling aspects of their experience that's fine if it works for them. But it will probably make them uncomfortable if they come up against somebody like me. So they just shouldn't! They shouldn't read my work!

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.

My own life has in some ways been a decades-long tour of the sibling experience. I have full sibs I have half-sibs and for a time I had step-sibs.

Motherhood has completely changed me. It's just about like the most completely humbling experience that I've ever had. I think that it puts you in your place because it really forces you to address the issues that you claim to believe in and if you can't stand up to those principles when you're raising a child forget it.

Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term.

Nature is not simply a technical or economical resource and human beings are not mere numbers. To suggest that one can somehow align all the squabbling institutions of science environmental management government and diplomacy in an alliance of convenience to regulate the global climate seems to me optimistic.

Population when unchecked goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.

Politics are beautiful. They enable a community to live collectively with one another. It's not about stabbing each other in the back it's about enabling people to reach their dreams and pursue happiness.

I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.

Grumbling is the death of love.

After graduating from flares and platforms in the early 1970s I started drama school wearing a pair of khaki dungarees with one of my Dad's Army shirts accessorised by a cat's basket doubling as a handbag. Very Lady Gaga.

To go to hospitals and see people fight and overcome cystic fibrosis or cancer or any number of illnesses is to see courage that is humbling. And athletes constantly need to be humbled.