What I dream of is an art of balance of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing calming influence on the mind rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.

Friendship is unnecessary like philosophy like art... It has no survival value rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

When I write now I do not invent situation characters or actions but rather structures and discursive forms textual groupings which are combined according to secret affinities among themselves as in architecture or the plastic arts.

Until the Eighties Oslo was a rather boring town but it's changed a lot and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water's edge.

I left science then I went into art but I approach things very analytically. I choose to pursue both art and architecture as completely separate fields rather than merging them.

I did that Dior Couture 60th anniversary show in July. It took so long to get ready I think I would have rather been watching.

Because society would rather we always wore a pretty face women have been trained to cut off anger.

All through life I've harbored anger rather than expressed it at the moment.

It's amazing that you can listen to any song and you can always tell when there's some substance beneath it and when there isn't. Even if it's poetically written and technically brilliant I'd rather hear something that's all over the place but has some soul to it.

The attitude is we live and let live. This is actually an amazing change in values in a rather short time and it's an example of freedom from religion.

We are really on top of one another at the moment and I think it is amazing how we stay so close. Maybe that's the test. Why not totally put yourself together rather than always wonder whether you actually like each other?

I would rather be alone and a loud voice for action than be silent.

A singer for me is more like someone who is standing alone with a microphone like Scott Walker rather than someone who is bashing a plank and is spitting all over a microphone.

I like singer-songwriters and I find sad songs comforting rather than depressing. It makes you realise you're not alone in the world.

We are not to give credit to the many who say that none ought to be educated but the free but rather to the philosophers who say that the well-educated alone are free.

Communication is a continual balancing act juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world we have to act in concert with others but to survive as ourselves rather than simply as cogs in a wheel we have to act alone.

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.

I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field than their own hearts in their closet.

If it's true that our species is alone in the universe then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

IQ is a commodity data is a commodity. I'm far more interested in watching people interact at a restaurant with their smartphone. We can all read 'Tech Crunch ' 'Ad Age.' I would rather be living in the trenches. I would rather be going to Whole Foods in Columbus Circle to watch people shop with their smartphones.

Age should not have its face lifted but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character.

I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by this time such as kindness or cleverness.