“I like the mentality of the Americans. It’s like when you talk about money.”

I work very hard and they don’t appreciate that.

It’s not too good to have this attitude in F1. It could be a disadvantage.

When you win a race like this the feeling is very, very good.

People who never drove a car in these conditions, they just don’t know.

When I look fast, I’m not smooth and I am going slowly. And when I look slow, I am smooth and going fast.

I was very interested in that. It is very important to have confidence as well as to build up experience.

I was looking at the history of the sport and I couldn’t understand why there have been so many good South American drivers, especially Brazilians.

If I could have pushed hard and attacked. But then I would have had a good chance of making a mistake.

Without going to what I think is my limit. I always say that my ideal is to get pole with the minimum effort, and to win the race at the slowest speed possible.

I’m brave to say that I won’t take this sort of risk.

I don’t like to go over curbs, because I don’t want to be hard on the car.

A German team could be quite good. But maybe they are a little bit too convinced that they are the best.

So in fact the only thing you can judge in this sport its the longterm. You can judge a career or a season, but not one race.

When I test I never go right to the limit. Only because when you are below the limit you can go at the same speed all day, and that’s the only way you can be absolutely sure about what you are testing.

Do you know, why I really love my helmet that much? Because it makes me 15 centimetres taller!

So I know at the beginning of the race, from all that I have analysed during the practice, whether I will win the race or not.

Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can’t erase it.

Sometimes all I want is to be a few inches taller so the world does not look like a dense collection of torsos.

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway?

When people want to be liked for what they did, they should stop.

You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.

I don’t know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else’s erotica that you don’t like.

In order to develop love – universal love, cosmic love, whatever you would like to call it one must accept the whole situation of life as it is, both the light and the dark, the good and the bad. One must open oneself to life, communicate with it.

Do I look like I’ve been crying?’ I say. ‘Hmm.’ He leans in close, narrowing his eyes like he’s inspecting my face.