I liked 35 and in both my novels that is the age of the lead characters. I tried making them my age but they just seemed to keep moaning about stuff.

If I won the lottery I'd start a charity that helped little family hardware stores, cobblers and fruit shops open in city centres.

My name is Alexei Yuri Gagarin Siege of Stalingrad Glorious Five Year Plan Sputnik Tractor Moscow Dynamo Back Four Balowski. Me Dad was a bit of a Communist, know what I mean?

Honestly, sometimes I get really fed up of my subconscious - it's like it's got a mind of its own.

People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.

Americans have different ways of saying things. They say 'elevator', we say 'lift'... they say 'President', we say 'stupid psychopathic git.

Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, may have had his charms, but he really couldn't be considered hip.

There's a part of me that still hates everything, and my natural view default setting is still very cynical and dark

I've been going to Granada for many years and 12 years ago bought a house a few miles outside the city.

If sitcoms were easy to write, there'd be a lot of good ones, and there aren't.

Dire Straits is a great band. Someone tells you they like ""Brothers in Arms"" and immediately you know they're a stupid annoying git.

The beauty of being a woman, as the French say, "of a certain age", is that I can be invisible. Young people, both men and women, look right through me, unless I make the effort to be noticed.

There is only one hope for mankind - and that is democratic socialism. There is only one party in Great Britain which can do it - and that is the Labour Party.

We played in Texas about a year ago, at Emo's, the famous country and western club in Austin. And I figured, well, if I'm finally gonna die onstage, that's where it's going to be!

What Ive learned is that music affects the way you feel. A song can change someones life.

Wherever on earth the religious neurosis has appeared we find it tied to three dangerous dietary demands: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence.

Death? Translated into the heavenly tongue, that word means life!

You have to fight really hard for a private life, and sometimes you don't have one. It just gets to you after a while. It's tough.

People in magazines are 50% bimbo and 50% pregnant women.

[Before introducing the nominees for best animated film] If you're at the awards party with the guys who made the Lego Movie, now would be a good time to distract them.

I just wanted to see how the shorts felt again.