“If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.”

I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.

Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.

All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I’d got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.

Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it’s in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one’s own.

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life.

God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!

There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.

Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.

It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.

The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.

Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin

The thing I think about is that once you’ve done it, you then start to think about what you’re going to do next.

You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.

They may not have two spondees to rub together but they still want to pen their saga untrammelled by life-threatening activities like trailing round Sainsbury’s, emptying the dishwasher or going to the nativity play.

What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.

Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.

My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace – it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world.

You would see me cover every Adele, Christina Aguilera, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood. Then I’d have to do ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ and ‘Crazy Train,’ and it was a really weird combination.

What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there’s another force from inside battling to make us something else.

In ‘Insurgent’ we realise how large the world really is

If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run

Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume … that we really know the score…. [But] this is not an easy assignment.

I couldn’t really picture a world without music. It would be quite boring.