I'm the person who will go to a wedding and switch the place cards around because I don't want to sit next to someone I don't know, because I'm so bad at chatting to strangers.

Hackney gets a bit of a bad rap, but it's the only place I've ever lived that felt like a community. I know my neighbours.

I always, always want to make people laugh. In every situation. Even when it's inappropriate.

I never used to see anything on TV where the man was in the weaker position. It was always the female showing emotion, breaking down, being emotionally torn apart by men.

I'll cry anywhere because I can do it quite subtly. Walking, that's a good time to have a cry.

Comedians... they're different from actors. There's more ego there. They create the whole thing, I guess, so they're more precious.

Personally, my twenties were a complete waste of time. Professionally, I hope some good came of them.

I love Sutton House in Clapton, a beautiful example of Tudor architecture.

Spending way too long worrying about what people think about me is a bad habit.

I was the kid who liked making other people laugh, so maybe the comedy came before the acting.

Stresses in a marriage and in family life, sometimes they're prompted by whatever is going on in the wider world as well as what's going on behind your door.

America's finest - our men and women in uniform, are a force for good throughout the world, and that is nothing to apologize for.

Curse you, cheap beer. Must find miso in tiny packet.

In order to achieve anything, you must be brave enough to fail.

A little fight in you. I like that.

When I'm really involved or getting towards the end of a novel, I can write for up to ten hours a day. At those times, it's as though I'm writing a letter to someone I'm desperately in love with.

They're like ''You're an alcoholic.'' I go ''No, I'm not.'' and then-apparently that's what alcoholics say too, you know?

Since visiting the abatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.

In principle... no government in the world can accept an armed terrorist group, some of them coming from abroad, controlling streets and villages in the name of jihad.

Oppression makes a poor country.

The Steinway piano is the most harmonious implement for musical intention. It completes what is beautiful and artistic.