Yet there's something ominous about turning sixty-five. Suddenly old age is not a phenomenon which will occur; it has occurred.

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow

I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens.

There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart.

If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do I tell you!

I hate being on my best behavior. It brings out the absolute worst in me.

The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did.

The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more.

What was sleep? A blessing, a respite from life, an echo of death, a demanding nuisance?

Belief doesn't rest on proof or existence...it rests on faith...without faith there is nothing.

That's the purpose of old age... To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did.

Our daily gratitude shapes our everyday attitude.

Social media: a fine tool for radicalised idiots to find each other, a promised land for the pub bores and Champ Man anoraks of the nation.

In the 1930s, there was a stretch where you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's what's going on in today's private-equity world.

Having a little fun at my work does not make me any less of an artist and people who appreciate truly beautiful and original creations in pottery are not frightened by innocent tomfoolery!

Writing, as I experience it, means wringing out the heart/mind until it stops lying.

Rest is by no means a waste of time.

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.

The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.

The fact that ticket prices are way too expensive, and there's only one bunch of people going to see Broadway shows, is something I've never liked.

My mom was at every single game I played as a kid, rain or shine