“Even the solitude, I’ve actually grown to quite like. I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I’ll have only the roads, the big gray sky and my daydreams for company.”

There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To what extent can they transcend their fate? As time starts to run out, what are the things that really matter?

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

Love isn’t about when you first meet. It’s about the many, many years you spend together, when you’re trying to keep that flame burning.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I’ve always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

I try to always go for something very interior, following thoughts and memories, something that I think is difficult to do on the screen, which is essentially a third-person medium.

And if these incidents now seem full of significance and all of a piece, it’s probably because I’m looking at them in the light of what came later.

I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having this one.

We all live inside bodies that will deteriorate. But when you look at human beings, they’re capable of very decent things: love, loyalty. When time is running out, they don’t care about possessions or status. They want to put things right if they’ve done wrong.

It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you.

I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time.

The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.

One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.

As with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.

What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that’s been given to them, and find some dignity.

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.

I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?

You don’t need to have a 100 person company to develop that idea.

If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

I’m going to go do this crazy thing. I’m going to start this company selling books online.

Don’t live to please everyone. Embrace those who enjoy your company and to hell with the haters.

A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

If Alibaba cannot become a Microsoft or Walmart, I will regret it for the rest of my life.

I am convinced that companies should put staff first, customers second and shareholders third – ultimately that’s in the best interest of customers and shareholders.

My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact.