I wish I'd known that one day the geek would inherit the Earth.

Keep going and don't give up. You're doing wonderfully. You'll know how to fly this thing eventually.

I suppose I just like being arty. That's all. Arty.

I'd say, don't listen to what anyone says: you're good. Go put your anorak on. Get your thick bottle-top specs. Draw your little cartoons and your comics and keep writing to the BBC.

I love people where, at the end of the day, they'll pick up a paintbrush and paint clouds. They can physically make things.

There is no such thing as too much swearing. Swearing is just a piece of linguistic mechanics. The words in-between are the clever ones.

I found American actors quite scary because they're brilliant actors and brilliantly funny, and they never stopped once you wound them up... off they went and they just deliver fantastic stuff.

I'm not an extravagant man. The fact that I can have a coffee out whenever I want still makes me feel grateful.

Every viewer who ever turned on Doctor Who has taken him into his heart. He belongs to all of us.

The older I get, the more I think lightness of touch is an incredibly difficult thing to do.

A girl once came to my beery flat in Kensal Green, opened the blinds and cooked me breakfast. I married her.

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.

Music is the melody that longs to be heard by someone who can appreciate it.

When you walk in silence your excellence will always speak for you.

The ones who say "you can't" and "you won't" are probably the ones that are scared that you will.

Poetry, especially traditional Iranian poetry, is very good at looking at things from a number of different angles simultaneously.

When you're reading from a different language that's different from your own, it's not the same as being fluent.

Leadership is all about right and wrong.

I guess I've always lived the glamorous life of a star. It 's nothing new - I used to spend down to the last dime.

I think I'm part of a generation of crime writers all of whom woke up independently and recoiled with horror at the fact that we'd chosen this very conservative genre.

If there has not been such a thing as gymnastics, I would have had to invent it because I feel at one with the sport.