Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents and immigrants like them were known as '£10 poms.' Back then the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest educated white people - to come and live in Australia.
How quickly we forget God's great deliverances in our lives. How easily we take for granted the miracles he performed in our past.
I have never made but one prayer to God a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
The United States is locked in a new arms race for that most precious resource - the future entrepreneurs upon whom economic growth depends. Substantial research shows that immigrants play a key role in American job creation.
No I think the future of humanity will be like the past we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities.
Often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places.
I keep my friends as misers do their treasure because of all the things granted us by wisdom none is greater or better than friendship.
The higher one climbs on the spiritual ladder the more they will grant others their own freedom and give less interference to another's state of consciousness.
You have the freedom to live and let live to love and let love. Granting yourself that freedom is one of the healthiest most constructive things you can do for yourself and the people who matter to you.
Today hundreds of millions dwell in freedom from the Baltic to the Adriatic from the Western Approaches to the Aegean. And while we must never take this for granted the first purpose of the European Union - to secure peace - has been achieved and we should pay tribute to all those in the EU alongside Nato who made that happen.
Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
Freedom does not come without a price. We may sometimes take for granted the many liberties we enjoy in America but they have all been earned through the ultimate sacrifice paid by so many of the members of our armed forces.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted all else follows.
There is only one kind of freedom and that's individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator and our liberty comes from our creator. It has nothing to do with government granting it.
In the long history of the world only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it.
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
End-of-the-world stories tend to ring true. I've always been drawn to them but as I wrote my own I found surprising pleasure in creating a world that is so radically changed yet where there's so much meaning and value in every small and ordinary thing we have and take for granted: hot showers enough food friends routines.