I had changed, and the sign of it was only that my own death seemed to me by far the least important thing in my life.

I know that in my public life I fell below the standards that I had set myself... I have seen what is wrong but not done enough to put it right. I have been more critical than correct. I have had opportunities of great positions in the service of the state, but I have put them aside. I know that I have not devoted myself enough to promoting the good of others.

The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance.

I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.

It’s unpleasant to find that what you had thought of as moral scruples suddenly seem not quite so important in the face of a stack of money.

But many of us, because of money and status, they’ve lost it. So we are reducing the efficacy and importance of the profession to the ordinary man, so everything you do now, the ordinary man can do it because you’re not doing the right thing.

At some point you just begin to take yourself a little less seriously.

And I realized — I realized how badly I'd been treated before, if my standards had become so low. If the freedom I'd been granted felt like a privilege and not an inherent right.

The problems in your life are much less about the things that are happening, and much more to do with the way you see them.

There have been moments when I also wasn’t able to attach as much importance to football as it seemed to me I should.

I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language

I consider myself more exportant than important.

Liv worried less about how important other people thought she was and more about things that really mattered.

I have lowered my identity. I have lowered the chattering of my mind. I don’t care about things that don’t really matter. I don’t get involved in politics. I don’t hang around unhappy people. I really value my time on this earth. I read philosophy. I meditate.