I was desperate for a friend, and I used to lie in bed at night thinking about what it would be like. My younger brothers and sisters had friends, and I used to watch them playing to try to work out what they did and how friendship worked.

I know from my own experience that there is much more to 'intelligence' than an IQ number. In fact, I hesitate to believe that any system could really reflect the complexity and uniqueness of one person's mind, or meaningfully describe the nature of his or her potential.

There are always things I find difficult - being in crowds, remembering faces. I do like routines. I always travel with someone. My life in Avignon is a very quiet one. I have an apartment that looks over the whole city. I can drop into town, but a lot of the time I write from home. In some respects I still live a very quiet, simple life.

I consider social skills a bit like learning a language. I've been practising it for so long over so many years I've almost lost my accent.

If when we are taught English we are just taught the rules of grammar, it would take all our love of our language away from us. What makes us love a subject like English is when we learn all these fantastic stories. Feeding the imagination is what makes a subject come alive.

As the 2016 campaign has graphically illustrated, Trump doesn't treat rivals gently. Testifying before a congressional committee in 1993, he began with his rote protestations of friendship.

There's this proud American tradition of worrying about the power of communication companies. That going all the way back to the founding, we've tried to limit the power of monopolies that played a role in our democracy.

Hunting for malware requires highly specialized knowledge of the intricacies of the domain name system - the protocol that allows us to type email addresses and website names to initiate communication. DNS enables our words to set in motion a chain of connections between servers, which in turn delivers the results we desire.

Trump has emphatically denied ties to Russia - a claim refuted by his Twitter feed and a cursory Google search. Putin says his government had nothing to do with the hack of the DNC computers, even though it carelessly left a trail of crumbs tracing back to his intelligence services. The cunning liar is exploiting the blundering one.

I look at the way that my kids interact with technology, and it becomes a mirror to the ways in which I myself interact with technology. I can see the ways in which that addiction and compulsion starts to settle in on them, and it's much more unnerving to see it in them than it is to experience it myself.

Michael Bradley has the stuff of leadership; he works hard and can break up the opponent's play. However, that's not enough to justify his philanthropic attitude towards possession, the generous portion of balls that he contributes to his foes. His sloppiness constantly culminates in unnecessary goals.

Google is arguably one of the greatest inventions. The search engine is one of the greatest inventions in human history.

Along with Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple, these companies are in a race to become our 'personal assistant.' They want to wake us in the morning, have their artificial intelligence software guide us through our days, and never quite leave our sides.

Gay marriage is a divisive issue in France, where Fillon has vowed to block adoption by same-sex couples. The battle against Islamism also remains a rallying cry; Fillon's campaign manifesto is called 'Conquering Islamic Totalitarianism'.

You can get too close as a team. You need time away from each other. You change in the same dressing room, you play on the same cricket field, you stay in the same hotel, you travel in the same planes and buses. C'mon - this business of everyone holding hands and being pally is nonsense.

Seth Green, he and I are trying to figure out how this all came about. Because we don't remember what came first, the chicken or the egg, no pun intended. But I don't remember what came first, 'Robot Chicken' or our friendship, because we've known each other for so long.

The sad thing is, I never wanted to be Princess Leia - I always wanted to be Han Solo!

My dad always said that hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard enough.

Not for nothing is their motto TGIF - 'Thank God It's Friday.' They live for the weekends, when they can go do what they really want to do.

There is a vast world of work out there in this country, where at least 111 million people are employed in this country alone - many of whom are bored out of their minds. All day long.

I have always argued that change becomes stressful and overwhelming only when you've lost any sense of the constancy of your life. You need firm ground to stand on. From there, you can deal with that change.

I lend people money, but I'd never lend something that would jeopardise a friendship if I didn't get it back.

You know, my mum's always encouraged me and never made my gender an issue, I guess. She brought me up to believe in equality, as opposed to feminism or sexism - so it just meant that my gender was not relevant to what I was capable of achieving.

I agree with cosmetic surgery for medical reasons - my mother had breast cancer and I think it's very sad when somebody has no choice in what happens to their body.

I travel regularly and have learnt to be very methodical as far as packing is concerned. For example, I always check the weather in advance of where I'm going to ensure that I've packed the right clothes.

It's amazing living alone. I'm very lucky. It's like a refuge.

I feel quite fearless protecting the people I love.

I try to stick to a certain diet all the time, and then when I feel like a reward, I have it. I try to stick to no dairy, no sugar, no wheat.

Sometimes when you've got too much money you lose your imagination.

I design all my sets. With my tour and my album artwork, I co-design that with people who are better at drawing than me. But I've got a good imagination. I went to art school so I understand how to communicate my ideas.

I'm really into food; it's one of my favourite things - everything from potato waffles to lobster.

I have a friendship with Hezbollah, and I also have contacts outside of Lebanon, but it doesn't mean I follow anyone's agenda.

I choose my words very delicately because I have a divided society.

It is mind-boggling to me that there are so few movies about female friendship, considering women make up half the movie-going population.

I'm a little quirky, a little offbeat, and I'm certainly not a classic beauty.

At 21, my career took a comedic turn when I was cast in a new Broadway play called 'Brooklyn Boy,' by Donald Margulies, which was equal parts funny and sad. I realized that the more seriously I expressed my character's feelings, the funnier the scene became.

I played a lot of dress-up in my room. I really liked being alone. I had a lot of friends, but I had an only-child, live-in-my-head personality.

You can only really hear the beat of your own drum if you give yourself the space to sit in it.

I was a precocious only child, and then I went through a fat, awkward stage for several years, so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It's how you survive, so I think it was more of a natural progression for me, developing into comedy.

In high school, everyone told me I had a great personality and sense of humor, but I wanted to be the girl who boys liked because she was pretty on top of being funny. I was boy crazy.

I prefer situational or character-based humor to gross-out gags and comedic set pieces.

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.

Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.

Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

The only risk of failure is promotion.

If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you may wake up each day with failure in mind because the goal is hard to reach, and you are progressing only by small amounts. It takes up all your willpower. I recommend that instead of a goal, you have a system.

Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.

If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens. The universe has plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it's your turn. It helps to see failure as a road and not a wall.

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.