Rather than writing about international events, I write about individual lives. There is elation and sadness, death and birth, love and jealousy, co-operation and betrayal. All the great emotional transactions that happen wherever people come together.

I now bid farewell to the country of my birth - of my passions - of my death; a country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies - whose factions I sought to quell - whose intelligence I prompted to a lofty aim - whose freedom has been my fatal dream.

Belief is the death of intelligence.

When I first got involved in the underground metal scene in '82, '83, there were only about five or six major Death or Black Metal bands around. There were so many other bands that were inspirational, that really helped.

I am shocked and deeply saddened by McQueen's death. He was a genius, and his talent was second to none. Like many others, I always cited him as a hugely inspirational leader of world fashion. He will be greatly missed.

Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.

Any film which views the darker side of life, which is death with a sense of humor, is very much to my taste.

When we are dealing with death we are constantly being dragged down by the event: Humor diverts our attention and lifts our sagging spirits.

My life was a legacy of death and humor.

I hope when I'm on my deathbed, people forgive me, because there is a lot to forgive.

I'm great at a deathbed. I've never given tranquillisers or psychiatric medicine. I've given love and fun and creativity and passion and hope, and these things ease suffering.

I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death... I think... peace and tranquillity will return again.

They were afraid, never having learned what I taught myself: Defeat the fear of death and welcome the death of fear.

It is impious to say that evil has its origin from God, because naught contrary is produced by the contrary. Life does not generate death, nor is darkness the beginning of light, nor is disease the maker of health, but in the changes of conditions there are transitions from one condition to the contrary.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering - an image of death.

Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

I like the clowns from the circus that have more paint on their face. They were all funny and made me laugh. As a kid, I remember the clowns that were all in white reminded me more of death than circus clowns. It can be a scary thing.

Despite the pain of his death, George is still very much alive in my memory today. A few years on from that tragic Christmas, I'll sometimes catch myself thinking of our friendship and those years together as young kids in Wham!

Going through an illness and then death of a close friend has changed my attitudes to friendship enormously.

I think closeness to death would be pretty exhilarating in a way, and friendship, yeh, and selflessness, a kind of selflessness, a sense of your own worthlessness, I think, is pretty exhilarating.

Where is instruction in relationships, in the management of career, in the raising of children, in the pursuit of friendship, in the wise approach to anxiety and death? All this sort of stuff I craved to learn about when I was a student and down to this day.

I came to know Gore Vidal in the mid-1980s, when I was living in southern Italy, virtually a neighbour, and our friendship lasted until his death in 2012. Needless to say, he was a complicated and often combative man.