Saying "muff" to someone and trying to be romantic is incredibly difficult.

I had teen angst for a while, but I think every teenager has the angst.

I never really sympathised with Peter Parker.

I'm a hard-mouthed north-eastern lad. That's me - the Eminem of Northeast England.

I'll tell you what I hate - bands like My Chemical Romance.

When you have a child, you are just immediately changed forever. You put yourself second. Your child comes first, and everything that you do is with them in mind.

New York is great for people watching and there's a bunch of amazing rooftops.

I never realised that the Edinburgh skyline was so interesting - it's gothic and very urban and there's a lot of church spires and old brownstone buildings.

I love anything that kind of removes me from myself and employs something else. So, I love accents and I love pretending.

I'm awkward around girls.

I wanted to be a journalist for a long time.

Somewhere there must be women reading books, and talking of chicken rissoles to their cooks …(from, ‘Somewhere in England’)

People don't act the way they do because of me. They just act out their own projection of reality, and so do I.

You think the dead we love ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble?

Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production - only to produce a race of bed-wetters!

One of my degrees was a science degree in biology.

In Chess, as it is played by masters, chance is practically eliminated.

The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.

Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.

I have sometimes been told that my music is 'difficult' for the listener.

But how can he expect that others should Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?