"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

I'm not a girl who gives up easily. I fight for what I want.

Is there any relief from some of thesepressures that I've been outlining? I think there is. I just want to turn to afew of them. Let's take meritocracy. This idea that everybody deserves to getwhere they get to, I think it's a crazy idea, completely crazy. I will support any politician of Left and Right, with any halfway-decent meritocratic idea; I am a meritocrat in that sense. But I think it's insane to believe that we will ever make a society that is genuinely meritocratic; it's an impossible dream.

Power is not given to you. You have to take it.

Success isn’t about being perfect—it’s about being persistent.

The past is never just the past. It is always a foundation for the present.