Like many people, most Libertarians feel empathy and sympathy for less fortunate people. But they know you can't have perfection in a world of limited resources.

Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books, because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket, then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering.

I'm in total sympathy with Dick Smith's sentiments I only wish there were grounds for saying we Australians would never tolerate such appalling treatment of refugees being carried out in our name.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.