All businessmen are scum.

Smoking is the now the principal avoidable cause of premature death in Britain. It hits the worst off people hardest of all. Smoking is one of the principal causes of the health gap which leads to poorer people being ill more often and dying sooner.

The present system of protecting NHS patients was a bit of a shambles.

There are alternate definitions of manhood in the West.

I am not against Muslim schools. But as I believe in integration, I think we would be better off overall if we did not have denominational schools at all.

All businessmen are scum.

I don't think we can go into important local elections next year... with Tony Blair as leader and expect to keep many of the councillors we've got now.

I think I've had a very privileged life.

If you say someone is thrilled, it implies talk of an exciting project. I'm wary of such talk.

It is more important for Labour to raise the reputation of politics than for the Tories, who are only in politics for the money.

My own view is that if you filled every member of the parliamentary Labour party with a truth drug and lashed them to a polygraph lie detector, very, very few of them would support foundation hospitals.

Despite all the criticisms that have been leveled at the comics community, both in terms of fans and creators, I have always felt more comfortable and accepted in the comics community than I have in any other medium of publishing that I've had the pleasure of working in.

In the wilderness is the salvation of the world.

You do sometimes watch performances and just think, 'I may as well give up. I won't reach that. I may as well give up.' But then there are other actors you watch and just think, 'Oh my God, yes, I want to try and do that. Try and be like that'. And Bryan Cranston is someone who I'd like to try and be like.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery the fronts people assume before one anothers eyes and the front a writer puts on the face of reality.

Cities are not static objects to be feared or admired, but are instead a living process that residents are changing all the time.

I wrote 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself.

You don't have to be dead to write a classic, and you don't have to be literary to be smart.

I care so much about making things that are useful for people to have and listen to, but I don't care so much that I won't do whatever the hell I want. It's just one of those things.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

There is always something I gain from watching a movie, whether it's a silly romantic comedy or an art film.

Don't minimize the importance of luck in determining life's course.

I resent limitations. I'm going to be this way for a while.

What you are is Gods gift to you what you become is your gift to God.

States, virtually all of them, have a constitutional requirement to operate on a balanced budget.

My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.

He comes never late who comes repentant.

I wanted to be an explorer, but gradually found the world had been explored and that there was nowhere left, really. Once they climbed Everest in 1953, when I was 10 years old, I thought, 'Well, that's pretty much it now.' But the idea of travelling and exploring and adventure was very strong.

The philosophy of fasting calls upon us to know ourselves, to master ourselves, and to discipline ourselves the better to free ourselves. To fast is to identify our dependencies, and free ourselves from them.

You've got to believe you can get a result from the game.

I started writing when I was 9 years old. I was like this weird kid who would just stay in my room, typing little funny magazines and drawing comic strips.

I've always said that if you can get the best people who are good at what they do, but more importantly are passionate about what they do, you'll succeed.

So give me a turbulent world as opposed to a quiet world and I'll take the turbulent one.

You know, I go to work in a great office every day, and the amount of freedom that goes with being a pro golfer on the tour is awesome. So I get to enjoy my weeks off away from the course, and then I get to go to work on some of the best golf courses in the world out here.

Sometimes it's so weird just to do an interview. This morning I was back in my parents' house, with my brother, and we went for a jog together, then had breakfast as a family. And a couple of hours later I'm wearing high heels and a dress and makeup, and talking about my job.