you were not supposed to listen to Wagner, who was known as an anti-Semite and who was loved by Nazis, then my mother said […] that’s the music that I like. And I don’t care if Nazis like them. They liked apples, too, and I still eat apples.

Be happy for this moment, this moment is your life

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it

Have you ever tried to do something, just to be free of the idea of doing it? Like many runners, I had a particular itch to run a marathon, and if I could scratch it, I might be free of it and never have to think about it again.

People’s IQs seem to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties.

The secret to good writing is to use small words for big ideas, not to use big words for small ideas.

Traveling by bicycle is, actually, my personal antidote to a good deal of life’s irreconcilable vexatiousness. It is, after all, a simple thing to succeed at - not simple in the sense of easy (it’s not) but simple in the sense of uncomplicated. However far you go, your achievement is measurable and unequivocal. You make an enormous effort, you worry about all sorts of things, you strain and sweat, you self-examine, self-aggrandise, and self-loathe, you exult, you despair, you exult again and despair again, but at the end of the day, at the end of the journey, you’ve arrived at a destination or you haven’t. What a relief from life’s more common challenges - family, work, love - and their irreducible ambiguities. There’s an hour or so at the end of each day, when I swing my leg out of the saddle … during which I feel indisputably worthy as a human being, someone who has spent the day profitably and deserves happiness.