There are signs that the age of petroleum has passed its zenith. Adjusted for inflation a barrel of crude oil now sells for three times its long-run average. The large western oil companies which cartellised the industry for much of the 20th century are now selling more oil than they find and are thus in the throes of liquidation.

Any new financial order for the world must tackle the three chief challenges of our age.

I've an enormous respect for my mother who at the age of 39 raised three children and I grew up with my grandmother in the household. And so it was a really strong household of women - my poor brother! It was great growing up with so many generations of women.

I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

I'm not busy... a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn't think my schedule looked so busy.

Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.

Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.