Quotes

I feel that being comfortable - being yourself - when you walk into an audition room is a really important thing. I think being able to own every aspect of your life is only going to make you be more comfortable in front of a table of people you don't know.

So many heroes are driven by destiny. Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, they were all chosen and born to heroism. Even with Batman, it doesn't feel like Bruce could do anything else. His whole life was leading him to become the Dark Knight.

I'm a lifelong 'Doctor Who' fan. Like, Peter Davison/Colin Baker, lifelong fan.

Life's more amusing than we thought.

The culture is about moving to a place where tobacco and smoking isn't part of normal life: people don't encounter it normally, they don't see it in their big supermarkets, they don't see people smoking in public places, they don't see tobacco vending machines.

In western culture, we have ignored death. We're running the other way - everything is about life and youth. So, there's something resonant about walking around with our own death masks. Zombies are the visible embodiment of death staring at us with our own faces.

I spend my working life pretending to be someone else.

I dispute the idea that we turn into our parents. These children who have come into my life are unique beings. I don't think I am teaching my children anything, frankly. I think they are teaching me.

My parents saw their job of parenting as their most important role in life, and I aim to aspire to that.

I mean I don't really think about it. You know, do you know what I often say to myself? I think you're very lucky in life if you know what you want to do.

I have lived and worked in Britain all my life. Not even in the dark days of penal Labour taxation in the Seventies did I have any intention of leaving the country of my birth.

To me, breakfast is my most important meal. It's often the meal you play a game on. I make sure I have oatmeal, milk, and fruit. It's the fuel you use to hopefully do your best, so eating right is a big part of being a professional athlete. I wish I paid more attention to it earlier in my life.

It's none of our business, the sexual preference of people. So, I hope if someone's thinking about it, that if they do come out as gay and are a professional football player, and it makes them happy, and it makes their life easier, then I think they should do it.

When I grew up, my father taught us the value of hard work. He wanted us to enjoy ourselves, but he also wanted to know what it took to be successful. He coached a lot of our sports teams growing up. We weren't very good, but we learned about hard work and enjoying life and your teammates.

In the end, does it really matter if newspapers physically disappear? Probably not: the world is always changing. But does it matter if organisations independent enough and rich enough to employ journalists to do their job disappear? Yes, that matters hugely; it affects the whole of life and society.

Life is too short to be a boring company.

Life is not about money.

I thought I understood the story very well, because I've lived with it for so long. But movies change and take on a life of their own once they start to be made, and you have to keep your eye on the real ball, not the ball that's in your head.

I like eating out. I like buying beautiful paintings and being surrounded by beautiful things. I have to finance that life. I can barely afford a pension scheme because I don't make enough money.

Poetry is at the centre of my life, too, emotionally speaking, and intellectually speaking - it's just that I'm one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.

I'm not much given to making shamanistic remarks about all this, but I'm a great believer in the dream life. If I can carry without spilling whatever it is that drips into my head in the night to my desk, then that's valuable.

I'm also a great believer in the dream life; that while we're asleep, a deep subconscious connection is made about our profoundest fears, hopes, loves, losses, dreads and desires.

I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way.

People know more about my views than they do about most BBC presenters because I had a life before becoming a BBC presenter.

The Margaret Thatchers of this country made it through - like I did - because of the grammar school system, which gave the opportunity of a lifetime to working-class kids. It put them on a level playing field with the privately educated kids, and opened up the top universities to them.