Just an hour with you, and I understand why we had to meet.

Inspiration doesn't really work like that - you're not looking out for it. Inspiration is something that tends to capture you rather than you capture it.

So I've had lots of different bands over the years who have stayed with me for certain tours.

All your travelling is together, you eat together, you're on stage as a band together, when you get to the sound-check the band and the crew are all together.

I love to go on tour and perform. I love all the parts of the process.

Yes, but the great thing about all the people - and I don't think there is any exception - who I've worked with is they've all been very, very talented musicians.

Right from day one, you know when you've written a good song.

I am constantly being told that I have been a big influence for many people, including other musicians.

So if you're on tour for eight months, a year... or whatever it is you definitely don't want arguments and I'm happy to say that I've always had a really nice bunch of people around me all the time.

When I was younger I was obsessed with writing, so even if I wanted to listen, I didn't have time.

This band - because this is myself on electric and acoustic guitars - we've done three tours together now and I really, really like it which is why I did the DVD as well.

You don't have to be rich and famous. You just have to be an ordinary person, doing extraordinary things. I'd like more people to know that it's there. Women's achievements still aren't recognised enough in many areas.

I've written what and when I want to. It's been about expressing myself. But with the degree, I had to learn to do everything in a very specific, disciplined way. I am very disciplined, but this demanded a totally different kind of discipline. A real challenge.

So, the combination of looking at lots of different people and how they react to each other and how they relate to each other and waiting for that inspiration is the thing that allows me to keep writing.

In America, you watch TV and think that's totally unreal, then you step outside and it's just the same.

I've always written in a free, unencumbered way.

Yesterday I was playing Beethoven's fifth, because I love that.

One of them would definitely be the Nelson Mandela gig, when I played the tribute song for him. He was up and dancing, and he really enjoyed it. It was a really lovely occasion.

I found my sound early on. Look at U2: they haven't changed their music for 20 years. Anyway, many people come unstuck when they try to change what they do and what they are known for.

When you're on tour you definitely don't want lots of arguments. It's very important that everybody gets on because you're in close proximity a great deal of the time.

It's a very organic process, and it has a specific order to it. I love to write, and once you've written, then you arrange. After the arrangement, you record it, and then you tour it.

Classical, Romantic, and Baroque music, that's what I really like.

My mother bought a piano, put it in the front room, and I just started writing my songs.

Writing music is just something that I was born to do.

Just an hour with you, and I understand why we had to meet.

That is one of the things about going on tour, that I get to work with some really talented people and it allows me to be able to listen to them as well - and just have fun on stage.

To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate - unlike most films.

There's a danger of the Internet just becoming loud, ugly and boring with a thousand voices screaming for attention.

It's a very complex network of genes making products which go into the nucleus and turn on other genes. And, in fact, you find a continuing network of processes going on in a very complex way by which genes are subject to these continual adjustments, as you might say - the computer programmer deciding which genes ultimately will work.

But when we have families, when we have children, this gives us a purpose for being, to protect our children, to avoid going to jail because if I'm in jail, who looks after my children, who's there for my wife?

I never really ate that bad, I just ate too much. It wasn't like I had to switch to whole wheat bread or something like that. I really just had to eat less of what I was eating, and I had to exercise more.

Do you have any idea what it's like when you try and make home porn? My husband and I tried it. We looked like charging hippos. Best to leave it to the pros.

I love going to work. I love being on-set everyday. It feeds me; it's exciting.

There is only one theology, but there are many theologians.

If women feel they are able to go from partner to partner without feeling emotionally invested and ultimately hurt, they should go for it.

Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the Past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday.

I always try to say, 'If you want to help the environment, try to do just two things. One, use less of your car. Second, separate your garbage.'

Rehab is one thing, but it takes years to get that attitude adjustment.

Women are complicated. We all know that.

In true open source development, there's lots of visibility all the way through the development process.

The desired Islamic state might be likened to an orchard planted with olive and palm trees that will take a relatively long time to produce fruit.

The healthy man is the thin man. But you don't need to go hungry for it; remove the flours, starches and sugars; that's all.

If people are all the same underneath, how has society changed so fast and so radically? Life now is completely different to how it was 32,000 years ago. It's changed like that of no other species has. What's made that difference?

The one this you want to remember is to cherish every moment.

It turns out that I've become a pretty good werewolf actor. I'm going to have to try to get myself into a different position, at some point in the future, but I'll take werewolf. Werewolf is pretty damn fun to play.

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.

When you're in L.A., and you're making movies and that kind of stuff, you don't really get a sense sometimes, I think, what the fans are like. But you go into a room with 4,000 people or 2,000 people who know your movie, know the lines, and know the characters; it's really a lot of fun.

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth.

In your 20s, you're just a sketch of what you think you're trying to be.