“It would shine a torch into the dirty little corner where the BNP defecate on our democracy, and that would be much more powerful than duffing them up in the street – which Im also in favour of.”

The spiritually starving hesitate to partake of the Spirit like a child’s reaction to new and strange food. They must be offered a tiny bite on a spoon.

I love horses. I spent seven years as a racing commissioner on a horse-racing board.

I think if you’re going to make political art, you have to engage at some level. You can’t just write about politics, you have to try and be politics as well.

That’s what I’m about — getting engaged. Too many people don’t wade in the mud with the politicians.

Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is / I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.

I want to like my music before you like it. I don’t want to sell anything that I don’t really like.

So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.

Christianity is the only true and perfect religion; and… in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts, they will be wise and happy.

[A]s long as you’re comfortable it feels like freedom.

Part of the problem with some elements of the European debate is that they hanker for the days when we were a great power. Those days are gone, and they went a long time ago.

Whether we like it or not, we live in a post-ideological world. That’s how a Donald Trump can get through. He has no ideology at all: in that sense, he’s a bit like Mussolini.

War what is it good for? It’s good for business.

Just because you’re gay, I won’t turn you away. If you stick around, I’m sure we can find some common ground.

Don’t saddle me with your ideals, and spare me all your guilt. For a poet with all the answers, has never yet been built.

Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all.

I’m still batting away on my politics for the Labour Party. I’m much further to the left of them than I used to be, but that’s because they’ve moved, not me.

Getting from page four to page five is more important than spending three weeks getting page four perfect.

Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life.

There’s certainly more new SF available than when I started writing.

When you know who you truly are, you can live more freely and in tune with your karma.

I like the tragedies way more than the comedies because they’re so universal.

You have to have more, you have to give people hope and a vision of a better world.

Hollywood is a strange place. The class structure here is more rigid than almost anyplace I’ve ever experienced. It’s made more difficult by the fact that it’s constantly changing.

I suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.