Critics called me 'egregious' - I had to look that one up - and 'creepy', but now I don't read them, I weigh them.

I'm busy and that's the way I like it - when I have too much downtime I get into trouble.

We were the only black family in an estate with 1,000 white families. Liverpool being quite racist in the Sixties, it was a bit grim growing up.

My life has been, I suppose, the most incredible series of highs and lows.

Once journalists have been rifling through your dustbins, you do try and keep them at arms' length.

It's evolve or die, really, you have to evolve, you have to move on otherwise it just becomes stagnant.

The inventory process and stepping back in your life can sometimes be a very dark process. But it also can be extremely funny and surprising.

I have a stepladder. It's a very nice stepladder but it's sad that I never knew my real ladder.

I was thinking - if we get a cell with a trouser press, we can make cheese toasties.

Who needs drugs when you have Takeshi's Castle?

It's not supposed to be easy, if it's easy, it's no good, that's the way I look at it.

If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.

At times poems can be like riddles, too difficult to decipher or comprehend. But how else does one come to understand what can only be felt but not said?

If there is no friendship with them [the poor] and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.

The kind of products you envision as an entrepreneur is a function of your life experience.

I couldn't believe when I first got a fan letter from Al Pacino, it was unreal.

Confrontation is not a dirty word. Sometimes it's the best kind of journalism as long you don't confront people just for the sake of a confrontation.

I am allergic to domestic goddesses. Men would prefer a woman with a dirty mind to a clean house.

Wealthy people don't even pay taxes. But everybody must pay taxes.

Spacemen - men who work in space, pilots and jetmen and astrogators and such - are men who like a few million miles of elbow room.

Our survival depends on our ability to form trusting relationships.