There's been a lot of focus on my body, but it's taught me to appreciate myself no matter where I am.
It's a book that makes me laugh and think - it would be very hard to like someone who didn't enjoy Candide!
We are now so far advanced in our denial of evil that we want to rationalise it away.
Twenty years ago, when you bumped into someone and asked how they were, they would say, 'Mustn't grumble' or 'Getting by': now they feel obliged to say 'Just great!'. In both cases, the reply is just a social nicety, but the framework has changed, it's as if it's become a social duty to express happiness.
The financial crisis happened because no-one could actually say out loud how bad things were.
Rereading Candide, I was struck by the link between optimism and the optimal, the idea that we have been placed in this optimal world rather than some other.
Optimism and happiness are not the same thing, but they are becoming interchangeable, and it seemed to me that Voltaire's Candide gave me a way into something important happening in modern-day culture.
The eyes of some of the fans at Davis Cup matches scare me. There's no light in them. Fixed emotions. Blind worship. Horror. It makes me think of what happened to us long ago.
Don't be confused by what looks like luck to you. Lucky people don't make successful people; people who completely commit themselves to success seem to get lucky in life.
A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again.
It's nice to see something more pathetic than I feel right now.