I've always loved Christmas and that's not really gone away from me from being a child to now. It's always a magical time and I'm unashamed in my love for Christmas.

Being a mod is more of a sensibility than a style.

You could say I'm a mod, but with a small 'm'; I don't wear a parka, but I do question what I wear and what I listen to, which is what it's all about.

Name anything - high-definition TV, computer obsolescence - and I'm pretty much annoyed by it.

I'm not posh or common, I'm in between.

I love that pre-mod jazz look of the late Fifties, the Steve McQueen style that influenced the British modernists.

Most people have a passive relationship with music and clothes, with culture. But music was my first contact with anything creative. Music is it, as far as I'm concerned.

I've got a stag weekend coming up and I've said I'm not doing anything more than a few drinks. I won't have it. I'll go home and watch Antiques Roadshow.

I hate the fact that so much of our life is computerised rather than mechanised.

True heroics, obviously, is not the absence of fear, but having that fear and doing something anyway.

Sherlock and Watson are a love story

Wahrscheinlich werde ich jede Nacht von dir träumen", sagte er. "Und wenn ich aufwache, weiß ich, dass der beste Teil des Tages schon vorbei ist.""Das hast du irgendwo gelesen.""Hab ich nicht.

The passage of time will usually extract the venom of most things and render them harmless

Refusing dominance over others by using money is a clear sign of wisdom.

A white wall is the fool's paper.

It's hard for us to talk about how we disdain file-sharing when in fact it probably has been a great resource for us.

It is nearly always the most improbable things that really come to pass.

Entertainment is all right, but entertainment with an idea behind it is much more important.

Being a happy warrior, you also have a lot of fun in what you do because you believe in what you're doing.

I like to go in right away as soon as I have things.

Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday.