Every small boy wanted to be a steam engine driver when they grew up in the old days, including me. There's something very special about them - the noise, the smell, the steam coming out everywhere.

Paddington Bear was a refugee with a label - 'Please look after this bear. Thank you', and he had a little suitcase.

It's nice having a bear about the house.

My daughter Karen was born in 1958, the year my first Paddington book came out, so she grew up with him.

As a cameraman, I was paid to stand within a few feet of Yehudi Menuhin performing. I saw Rudolph Nureyev dancing. I couldn't believe I was being paid for that.

I have a flat in Paris and go there a lot, but the Eurostar's much more civilised than flying.

From the very beginning, there was not the slightest doubt that Olga da Polga was the sort of guinea pig who would go places.

Feelings Are the Compass to Your Soul.

Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.

Today Relative to Yesterday or Tomorrow The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

Courage is the mother of all virtues because without it, you cannot consistently perform the others.

I have my loyal cyber-buddies out there, and I really do answer my e-mail. I'm in my pajamas at 3 in the morning with my zit medicine on. I owe everything to them.

My adolescence progressed normally: enough misery to keep the death wish my usual state, an occasional high to keep me from actually taking the gas-pipe.

Everyone is psychic. People just don't know that. They think so much. They worry so much. They're so caught up in unhappy emotions. They're not still enough.

I love it when the market reacts naturally to events. It's like a cat coughing up a fur ball.

It's like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're wrong.

I have spent every New Year's Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It's a place with meaning for me.