Central authority is bad. The bias should be for freedom. And without a central authority there are lots of little authorities and we learn which ones to trust.

You have all these people in the city and everything has become centralized. If you live outside the city and you need a birth certificate or some official paper from the government you have to travel to the city.

Greater personal choice individually tailored services stronger local accountability greater efficiency - these are all central to the new direction of travel we have set for our public services.

Here you have a new technology and if that technology is going to work you must allow people to provide central indexes of the data. It's just like a newspaper that publishes classified ads.

There is no development strategy more beneficial to society as a whole - women and men alike - than the one which involves women as central players.

I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society what we owe to ourselves.

If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream.

I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now the novelist must take a good hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.

The central task of science is to arrive stage by stage at a clearer comprehension of nature but this does not at all mean as it is sometimes claimed to mean a search for mastery over nature.

'Eyes Wide Open' took shape from two real life events straight from my own past. One was the sad suicide of my young nephew a troubled kid who was found at the bottom of a landmark cliff in central California. The second was a chance encounter forty years ago with none other than ahem Charles Manson!

But since independence Gabon is one of the few countries in Central Africa that enjoys peace and stability.

The central premise behind Oslo was that if Arafat were given enough legitimacy territory weapons and money he would use his power to fight terror and make peace with Israel.

There has not been a war in South America for fifty years and I have every confidence that the countries of Central and South America are deeply in earnest in the maintenance of peace.

I've also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament - it was about 1982 - they called it Peace Sunday.

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call but I wrote letters I wrote short stories I wrote books.

I start really missing London when I go away. I have a little flat but very central. I live above a pub and you'd think it'd be a nightmare but I like hearing the music and it's quite comforting.

I opened the large central window of my office room to its full on the fine early May morning. Then I stood for a few moments breathing in the soft warm air that was charged with the scent of white lilacs below.