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Met Jonathan Ive, chief designer for Apple. Impressive, lovely man. It feels wrong to tweet about him on my Blackberry.

How did the Italians come to eat so well?

John Dickie

I’m less likely to step on a sea urchin and get a spike in my foot in Crete than trip over a dead neigbour and get a syringe in my eye in London.

This week Charlie decided, after hearing several goats at close range, that the disturbing thing about goats is how human they sound: “Almost exactly like people moaning about being trapped in a goat’s body without using actual words, in fact.”

At his trial, when Socrates was asked to propose his own punishment, he suggested a wage paid by the government and free dinners for the rest of his life.

“I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.”

A woman once told me that every time she wore Lanvin, men fell in love with her. I told her, “Ugh, I hope next time you will tell me that every time you wear Lanvin, you fall in love.” And she said, “What is the difference?” Passive and active.

Alber Elbaz

Stating the obvious, in original ways.

I have made the following discovery and I pass it on to the world: The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects. I believed that with this discovery I was bringing joy to the world; it has not thanked me. People were sad and hung their heads […] Then I said: Weep not! See, therein lies the greatness of our age, that it is incapable of producing a new ornament.

But anyone who goes to the Ninth Simphony and then sits down and designs a wallpaper pattern is either a confidence trickster or a degenerate […] Anyone who goes around in a velvet coat today is not an artist but a buffoon or a house painter.

Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strenght.

Be truthful, nature only sides with truth.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function.

Louis H. Sullivan

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.