For me, the two weeks between Christmas and Twelfth Night have come to be reserved for desultory reading. The pressure of the holiday is over, the weather outside is frightful, there are lots of leftovers to munch on, vacation hours are being used up.

Deep in my cortex, the year is divided into reading seasons. The period from mid-October to Christmas, for instance, is 'ghost story' time, while Jane Austen and P. G. Wodehouse pretty much own April and May.

Throughout the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, Latin was the language of learning and international communication. But in the early modern period, it was gradually displaced by French. By the eighteenth century, all the world - or at least all of Europe - aspired to be Parisian.

A job should bring enough for a worker and family to live on, but after that, self-realization, the exercise of one's gifts and talents, is what truly matters.

Critics for established venues are vetted by editors; they usually demonstrate a certain objectivity; and they come with known backgrounds and specialized knowledge.

For years, I meant to read 'Arabian Sands', Wilfred Thesiger's account of two punishing camel journeys during the late 1940s across Southern Arabia's Empty Quarter. Now that I have, I can sheepishly join the chorus of those who revere the book as one of the half dozen greatest works of modern English travel writing.

In truth, my Anglophilia is fundamentally bookish: I yearn for one of those country house libraries, lined on three walls with mahogany bookshelves, their serried splendor interrupted only by enough space to display, above the fireplace, a pair of crossed swords or sculling oars and perhaps a portrait of some great English worthy.

In truth, I'm not really a cat person. Seamus, the wonder dog, still deeply mourned by all who knew him, was just about the only pet I've ever really loved.

Just as the Internet drops transaction and collaboration costs in business and government, it also drops the cost of dissent, of rebellion, and even insurrection.

In one sense, the Internet is like the discovery of the printing press, only it's very different. The printing press gave us access to recorded knowledge. The Internet gives us access, not just to knowledge, but to the intelligence contained in people's crania, access to the intelligence of people on a global basis.

Knowledge is exploding, so you need to commit yourself to a plan for lifelong learning.

Leadership is happening, but it's not coming from the leaders of the old institutions. Everywhere you look, you see these extraordinary, sparkling new initiatives that are under way.

Collaboration is important not just because it's a better way to learn. The spirit of collaboration is penetrating every institution and all of our lives. So learning to collaborate is part of equipping yourself for effectiveness, problem solving, innovation and life-long learning in an ever-changing networked economy.

Wherever you are, design your life. Live the values of your generation.

There is a mutual interest between Israel and the United States of America. It is more than friendship - it is friendship plus mutual interest, and it is bipartisan.

In a democracy, you need to have a strong judicial system. You need freedom of speech, you need art, and you need a free press.

A romantic relationship requires honesty between a couple.

The attitude of 'every nation unto itself' is a destructive one for the future of Israel.

I believe that democracy is about values before it is about voting. These values must be nurtured within society and integrated into the electoral process itself.

I believe most of the public should be involved in the election of the leadership.

I've found that in business opportunities will constantly emerge or situations develop that make you revise your plans along the way.

Anyone born in the year 1950 who grew to fancy themselves as a soulful 18-year-old bought 'Songs of Leonard Cohen' upon its original release in 1968. For many of them, it was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Christmas is a time for slipping into familiar patterns.

The great children's author and illustrator Shirley Hughes marks her 90th birthday by appearing as Michael Berkeley's guest in 'Private Passions'.

'How I Built This With Guy Raz' asks entrepreneurs to tell the story of how they made their name and, in some cases, their fortune. Whether they're in the business of selling burritos or dating apps, there's inevitably something you can learn from their stories.

Don't let this music industry or any industry come between friendship. Just stay focused on your goals.

To me, Green Arrow in the past, what people loved about Oliver Queen pre-New 52 was his relationships with other heroes. Like his friendship with Green Lantern, his animosity with Hawkman, his romance with Black Canary - these are all the things that sort of defined him.

I have a lot of great fans. A lot of fans have cosplayed as Sweet Tooth, which I thought was really cool.

I look at my son and his relationship to technology, and I think back to when I was six and how wildly different the world is in that regard. I see him using an iPhone and all this stuff, and then I think back to when I was six. We didn't even have computers in our houses at all yet. This is a huge gap between our experiences as children.

I've always enjoyed teen characters, and kids as well. For whatever reason, I seem to have an ability to do it sort of well, and I enjoy doing it.

The first time I got into astrology was being in New York. I was like, 'Oh, this is a real thing here!' Now, I'll Google what your sign is and what my sign is to see the predictions of friendship, and I find that really cool. But that's the most I know.

When you've got African parents, you go to uni, do finance, and go into accounting. But I'm not good with systems. I dropped out in my final year of college to become a Christian poet. Then went back to do my A-levels and went to uni in Birmingham to do political science and theology. I lasted 12 weeks.

I wanted to write a show about an estate that wasn't sad or morbid, like a lot of shows portray working class life to be.

'Chewing Gum' is a sitcom set on an estate in east London. Its central character is a girl from a Pentecostal background who decides to embark on a more worldly lifestyle - it's about adolescence 10 years too late. In my dreams, everybody is watching it, finding out about my world and realising it's not what they imagined. That it's not terrifying.

The unpredictability of the weather, the increasing possibility of intelligence introducing a species more powerful than ours, the growing uncertainty that animals can or should be slaughtered for our pleasure, has led many of us to start asking more complex questions about what is and isn't normal.

I became a very passionate Christian when I was 17. I started writing and performing poetry at different venues across the U.K. I started performing from then, really.

I've always liked using humor, but what I had to with 'Chewing Gum' was take out a lot of darkness so it would be a bit more feel-good.

Maybe having to pretend to be in love with someone and then jump into bed with them breaks the ice very quickly; friendship follows fast.

I always took 'Coronation Street' a year at a time anyway. It was the 50th anniversary; I'd been there five years. It just felt right to leave.

So many people say you have to remember to grab hold of your bride or groom and spend time with them. I think if we had done a traditional wedding, we would have been doing it for everyone else, but this was about the two of us.

I've already been married six times in my career as an actress - twice as Becky - so I think a wedding of my own might feel too much like work!

I love going to other people's weddings, but I have never desired a big white wedding for myself, and it has never been put on me as a pressure, an expectation.

I've come, even as a feminist, to dread the phrase 'female friendship,' because it tends to signal overdetermined relationships.

Saying that you spend Christmas alone is, to most middle-class Americans, akin to confessing a terminal illness.

I could be imagining it, but I believe myself to have exchanged sly, understanding nods with other people I see attending movies alone on Christmas Day.

I read almost no romantic fiction, in part because I barely believe in romance in the age of Tinder.

If Reagan had intelligence information that showed that the upheaval in Egypt is actually Democratic in spirit, then he would have, I believe, turned his back on Mubarak, even though there's a long friendship between the United States and Egypt.

Stubbornness is a positive quality of presidential leadership - if you're right about what you're stubborn about.

One thing 'not right' on the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches is the sad fact that the Edmund Pettus Bridge hasn't been renamed the John Lewis Bridge.

We can only imagine the history of the free world today if, at the end of the Civil War, there had been two countries: the United States and the Confederate States of America.