Your art kind of changes as you get older by nature of the fact that you're hopefully gaining wisdom and you're starting to watch things with a better overview.

Humility is the only true wisdom by which we prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life.

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often and changeth his mind the fool is obstinate and doubteth not he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.

The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft no new taxes no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.

War continues to divide people to change them forever and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen called it.

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi raise aphids as livestock launch armies into war use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies capture slaves engage in child labour exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

Officials at the White House are saying that President Bush hasn't changed his schedule much since the war started. The main difference they say is that he's started watching the news and taping Sponge Bob.

When I can look life in the eyes grown calm and very coldly wise life will have given me the truth and taken in exchange - my youth.

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it but truth is a point of view and so is changeable.

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage there's no betrayal of trust.

Citizens the priority now is to recover trust between the Egyptian - amongst the Egyptians and to have trust and confidence in our economy and international reputation and the fact that the change that we have embarked on will carry on and there's no going back to the old days.

But that citizen's perception was also at one with the truth in recognizing that the very brutality of the means by which the IRA were pursuing change was destructive of the trust upon which new possibilities would have to be based.

Some of their best songs don't have bridges and choruses. So that made me think I should trust my instincts. My songs were okay I figured. I didn't need to change anything.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I'll give you an example I don't read what's handed to me. People say 'Here here's your speech or here's an idea for a speech.' They're changed. Trust me.

Time travel may be achieved one day or it may not. But if it is it should not require any fundamental change in world-view at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.

Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society.

I'm a big fan of doing 'Triple D.' But I don't want to do it forever don't get me wrong! Travel away from my family are you crazy? But do you know what it does for these mom-and-pop restaurant joints? It changes their lives forever. I mean their businesses will never be the same.

When you're an artist there's always a moment in your life when you think you're not inspired and instead of doing things and instead of travel and instead of falling in love you're just depressed so you don't move so you don't change. So you're not inspired.

The idea is to have global standards. There is so much travel that if you just had a regional standard it would probably ultimately have to be changed.

For many years it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months travel the world through coups d'etat assassinations famines massacres and tsunamis and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle.

Each day as I travel through downtown Tucson I am amazed at how quickly the most ancient of human behaviors have changed. For as long as there have been Homo sapiens - roughly 200 000 years - people have filled their lives principally with two activities: talking directly with other people and doing physical things.

To get away from one's working environment is in a sense to get away from one's self and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

Traveling you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities places exchange their form order distances a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.

Now I'm fighting cancer everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how's your day and nothing is changed for me.