To hear the Treorchy Male Choir in full throat is one of the great joys of choral music.

History is too often the refuge of the tidy-minded, making neat patterns when the dust has settled.

There's nothing the British like better than a bloke who comes from nowhere, makes it, and then gets clobbered.

Writing novels is a way of living alternative lives.

Occasionally now I feel a wang that goes in my head - once you've got it you've got it. The [illness] was quite severe, leaving me deeply unhappy and frightened.

When anybody tells you something about writing, somebody will tell you something completely different and they will also be right

More people now work in the arts than the steel, coal and car industries combined.

Is it rather stupid and dangerous to take Magna Carta so much for granted, as many of us seem to do, and to think of this attitude as 'very English?'

I'm not a fan of the working class being mocked, including by some of our famous writers - even those who came from it.

The arts stimulate imagination. They provoke thought. And then, having done that, all sorts of other things happen.

Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly.

I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.

Travel, of course, narrows the mind.

If you are tuning in just for the show, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

Adultery - which is the only grounds for divorce in New York - is not grounds for divorce in California. As a matter of fact, adultery in Southern California is grounds for marriage.

High school dropout rates nationally - Not enough is being done on this issue.

It's real nice and exciting for me to break the records, but it's more exciting for me to be on a winning team.

I'm always moving forward creatively and don't like stalling, trying to find the perfect snare drum sound.

I trust my arm as much as I trust my legs.

I've always got on very well with the French, perhaps because I'm very natural.

To win, you've got to put the ball in the macramé.