A good example of the modern world is the Eurotunnel. And mobile phones - I like them.

Without the piano my life would be a disaster - nobody would hold me in any regard. It's the thing that saved me.

I learned from Van Morrison and BB King that the first take is the best. It's about capturing a moment. It's the same as love's first kiss. If you try to do it again, it doesn't work so well.

As a bandleader, I try to pass on the same family values that I grew up with: help people, hang on to your sense of humour, be tolerant and keep your judgments to yourself.

It would be great to have Bach in one corner, Bessie Smith in another, John Lennon in another. That's what I'd ideally like. A studio of the dead.

'The Tube' was the first time the plebs had gone on the television. The lunatics taking over the asylum.

Due to my work, I tend to stay in hotels a lot of the time, and I generally prefer smaller hotels, as you tend to get better service than in the larger hotels.

Amy Winehouse and Paul Weller are examples of poets, I think.

I do so much travelling in my work that my suitcase is always packed, with my passport ready. I rarely unpack, as I am constantly on the move.

Naggers always know what they are doing. They weigh up the risks, then they go on and on and on until they get what they want or until they get punched.

God will cause you to prosper, even when man says you won't.

Will our souls, hurrying on in diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream?

In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.

The body is like an elaborate metaphor. One may be able to taste and not swallow, like the anorexic, or to swallow and not integrate, like the bulimic or obese.

You can't change laws without first changing human nature.

Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune.

I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery.

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

The reason I'm not a neurobiologist but a cognitive psychologist is that I think looking at brain tissue is often the wrong level of analysis. You have to look at a higher level of organization.

Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap.