I collect axioms, paradoxes, maxims, teaching stories, proverbs, and aphorisms of all sorts, because I love to see complex ideas distilled into a few words.

I love finding - or inventing - ways to categorize people.

I have a lucky perfume. I love beautiful smells, but I save one of my favorite perfumes to wear only when I feel like I need some extra luck.

It's so easy to use tired, shopworn figures of speech. I love using long, fancy words but have learned - mostly from writing my biography of Winston Churchill - that short, strong words work better. I am ever-vigilant against the passive and against jargon, both of which are so insidious.

What light is to the outer physical world intellect is to the inner world of consciousness. For intellect is related to the will, and thus also to the organism which is nothing other than will regarded objectively, in the approximate same way as light is to a combustible body and the oxygen in combination with which it ignites.

A proverb is much matter distilled into few words.