"It wasn’t going to be hard—it was going to be impossible. It wouldn’t deter me. I’d done impossible things several times in the past, and the prospect didn’t scare me as much as it used to."

"Marriage, like spinach and opera, was something I had never thought I would like."

"“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “it is my considered opinion that most coincidences are simply quirks of chance—if you extrapolate the bell curve of probability you will find statistical abnormalities that seem unusual but are, in actual fact, quite likely, given the amount of people on the planet and the amount of different things we do in our lives.”"

"“We’re fine, Joff. You?” “Not that good, Thurs. The Church of the Global Standard Deity has undergone a split.” “No!” I said with his much surprise and concern in my voice as I could muster. “I’m afraid so. The new Global Standard Clockwise Deity have broken away due to unresolvable differences over the direction in which the collection plate is passed round.” “Another split? That’s the third this week!” “Fourth,” replied Joffy dourly, “and it’s only Tuesday. The Standardized pro-Baptist conjoined Methodarian-Lutherian sisters of something-or-other split into two subgroups yesterday. Soon,” he added grimly, “there won’t be enough ministers to man the splits.”"

"“He said you were very dangerous.” “No more dangerous than anyone else who dares to speak the truth.”"

"My father told me that for the most part coincidences could be safely ignored: they were merely that chance discovery of one pertinent fact from a million or so possible daily interconnections. “Stop a stranger in the street,” he would say, “and delve into each other’s past. Pretty soon an astounding-too-amazing-to-be-chance coincidence will appear.”"

"I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does."

"You’ve got a face longer than a Dickens novel."

"The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date."

"“It’s easy. A lobotomized monkey could do it.” “And where are we going to find a lobotomized monkey at this time of night?”"

"“Haven’t I seen your face somewhere else?” “No, it’s always been right here on the front of my head.”"

"“James Crometty!” demanded Bowden. “Did you kill him?” “I kill a lot of people,” whispered Felix7. “I don’t remember names.” “You shot him six times in the face.” The dying killer smiled. “That I remember.” “Six times! Why?” Felix7 frowned and started to shiver. “Six was all I had,” he answered simply."

"Don’t ever call me mad, Mycroft. I’m not mad. I’m just...well, differently moraled, that’s all."

"“It was a coincidence.” “I don’t believe in coincidences.” “Neither do I. That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”"

"Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing."

"Edward, Edward," he said with a patronising smile, "there are no unanswered questions of any relevance. Every question that we need to ask has been answered fully. If you can't find the correct answer then you are obviously asking the wrong question."

"“Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.” It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive."

"There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth."

"The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once."

"The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge."

"The man who has ceased to fear has ceased to care."

"One said of suicide, “As long as one has brains one should not blow them out.” And another answered, “But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.”"

"The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness."

"Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart’s blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink."

"We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings."

"It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least."

"There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us."

"True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat."

"The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind."

"Eclecticism. Every truth is so true that any truth must be false."

"I will begin with the self-styled "Christian" party, who profess to base their morality on the New Testament. But whether it is really more Christian to follow or to ignore the teachings of the Gospels I shall not discuss."

"The man whose nature is such that by one path alone his chief desire will reach consummation will try to find it on that path, whatever it may be, and whatever the world thinks of it; and if he does not, he is contemptible."

"Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct."

"Of Optimism I have said that "The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.""

"The artist's main business is to train his eye to see,then to probe and then to train his hand to work in sympathy with his eye. I have a habit of looking, and really seeing."

"So we beat the Croations at football and I was there yelling "Ah, you Crotes!" and this guy says "It's cro-at; learn to speak English." So I was about to retort when he said "Hang on, you're Omid Djalili! You're good! I said "Aww thanks." He says "What are you going to do next?" I said "I'm in a pantomime of Wind in the Willows. I play the TO-AD, OF TO-AD HALL! I get in my BO-AT! And it sinks because it can't FLO-AT! And when I get out of the river, I'm wet and cold so I put on my CO-AT! And I can't get in my house because it's full of ferrets and STO-ATS!" Amusing wordplay but ultimately leads nowhere."

"When the war kicks off in Iran, I will be there. People ask me "Whose side are you going to fight on?" To these people I say "Fight? I'm not going to fight! I'm going to entertain!" Because let's face it, when they see my comedy, they won't have the will to fight. When the American and Iranian troops see the comedy of Omid Djalili, they won't have the will to live!"

"YOU BASTARD! Come to my carpet shop."

"I am the only Iranian comedian in the world... and that's three more than Germany!"

"A Persian Cat! Not an Iranian cat, no: an Iranian cat has a bomb under the body warmer!"

"Semtex... with nowt taken out!"

"Its part of a comedy cultural exchange tour: tonight, I am doing the UK and Jim Davidson is being buggered in Baghdad right now, systematically and without cessation, by United States Troops! Such fun."

"What do you call an honest Iranian businessman? Asif."

"Efficiency is not the issue when you go solar. There is so much solar that all you have to do is invest in the non-recurring cost of more dishes to drive a solar-hydrogen economy at whatever efficiency it happens to sit at."

"The biggest challenge [for solar power] is escaping from the economic effects of vendor lock-in where large investments in nuclear and traditional energy sources keep us 'locked-in' to feeding monsters that will bring us down an economic black hole. It's rather like the play The Little Shop of Horrors where a man-eating plant is initially fed small amounts, but then its voracious appetite sends it into a downward spiral swallowing up anyone that gets in its way."

"The fact that there simply is 5,000 times more sun power than our consumption needs makes me very optimistic. It's a fantastic resource. We have the ingenuity to send man to the moon, so we definitively have the ingenuity to tap the sun's resources."

"One can justify solar-hydrogen simply on grounds of economic resource viability without any green agenda."

"My starting point is as an academic who always thought nuclear was the answer, but who then looked at the figures and came to an inescapable conclusion that solar-hydrogen is the long-term future. I did not come at this as a green evangelist. I am a reluctant convert."

"My advice to prospective PhD students is to follow your passion and pick a topic that interests you — don't do a PhD topic that you hate, but you think will be lucrative. Because the big picture is that it is the fundamentals learned and problem solving skills gained from your PhD that will open the real career doors. Topics come in and out of fashion — it is the investment in yourself and the person you become through your PhD experience that really matters in the end. Of course, if you happen to love a topic that turns out lucrative then great — but this is hard to predict."

"My advice to all students is to question everything! You never know where a "silly question" may lead you."