I wanted stories, and I wanted them always, and I wanted the experience that only fiction could give me: I wanted to be inside them.

When I was a child, I pestered my elders for stories.

Hard work will never kill you

I'm the chief science officer of a foundation that works on the application of regenerative medicine to the problem of aging.

Preach in the name of God. The learned will smile; ask the learned what they have done for their country. The priests will excommunicate you . . .

If you work in either journalism or politics... you will be flogged for being right and flogged for being wrong, and it hurts both ways-but it doesn't hurt as much when you're right.

We're running out of time.

I love reading. I'm fortunate enough to have signed books by Faulkner, Steinbeck, Thomas Pynchon.

I don't have a favourite designer because I feel every designer offers something different and special, but I do really like Alexander Wang, Burberry, Stella McCartney and Balmain.

A frog would leap from a throne of gold into a puddle.

There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled.