Libraries are public treasuries. They're ways in which well-meaning societies leave the wealth of the past arranged A to Z so that anyone walking past can find it.

Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue. Yet emotions are also our indispensable tool for navigating, for feeling our way through, the much larger domain of stuff that isn't susceptible to proof or disproof, that isn't checkable against the physical universe.

What we need in Europe is to push back against the idea that religion is so farfetched that it's not worth talking about.

There have been low moments before, but Christianity is an incredibly adaptable organism, using different parts of its repertoire to mutate into new ecological niches, yet preserving intact its story of grace, of love improbably triumphant.

Mine is a European imagination, shaped largely by my very promiscuous reading in German, French, English and, with greater difficulty, Italian.

I didn't want to go to school, because I wanted to be an artist, and they were never going to teach me art. None of my family had ever done that kind of stuff either.

Solitude is creativity's best friend, and solitude is refreshment for our souls.

There is much more immediate access to creative music through online communities and blogs which have touched all corners of the music world including contemporary classical.