It's absolutely fine to think of new ways of doing things, and I'm not just asking for the traditional reporter to look into our living rooms night after night.

That test should not be about ratings. What should weigh is the knowledge that a public broadcaster delivers programmes that matter.

I honestly believe that TV generally is obsessed with the ratings battle to the point of cutting its own throat.

The BBC produces wonderful programmes; it also produces a load of old rubbish.

It's absolutely fine to think of new ways of doing things, and I'm not just asking for the traditional reporter to look into our living rooms night after night.

I had no expectation that the Prince would offer me the unprecedented and unfettered access to the original and entirely untapped sources on which this biography is based.

I ought to rejoice in the fact that our principal rival has died, but I don't.

I was disappointed not to be able to interview Mr. Clinton. I met him two years ago. I was looking forward to talking with him about issues from Africa to terrorism.

Programme names have been changed, and we have Andrew Neil saying he won't be using long words.

The long, forensic interview really matters.

I fail to understand how you can justify a poll tax on the entire population, yet exclude a significant proportion of that population from programmes that this tax is paying for.

The moment seemed right to me for a full and, if possible, authoritative portrait of the life and character of the Prince of Wales.

Over the last two years, I have been able to comb through The Prince's archives. I have been free to read his journals, diaries and many thousands of the letters.

While I have corrected agreed factual errors, I have not been inhibited from writing what I felt to be the truth about The Prince of Wales.

I deplore the loss of arts on BBC One and Two.

You have to be damn certain you're putting something better in its place.

Not every programme dealing with issues of global significance has to be fronted by last week's winner of Have I Got News For You-but I suppose you might be wrong.

I'm not certain that the BBC can claim to be making a wide enough range of distinctive programmes to make the case convincingly.

The challenge is the culture. You have to have a vision for the BBC-it can't merely be that it's big and has a place in the market.

The BBC has the obligation to think big. And at the moment, that clarion call sounds an uncertain note to me.

At home in Devon, my wife Jessica does a huge proportion of the cooking - I do the basics. My timing is extremely good, particularly when it comes to vegetables, perhaps because in my work, timing is everything. I know exactly what fits into a minute when broadcasting, and I apply the same to carrots.

Food is about communal togetherness. Our family does sit at the table. I think it's a great tragedy if a family doesn't have a table, as there is such an atmosphere of good will and warmth when we have eight people sitting around it.

Food is important to me, but I wouldn't say that I'm a gourmet. I don't like tricksy food.

I have a great deal of joy in my life, and I'm very fortunate. That combination makes you aware of just how wonderful life can be on the one hand and how dreadful it can be for people on the other. You can't be happy in isolation.

I have to grit my teeth sometimes, knowing I am going to be written about. But I think it is my life, and I don't want to get people interested in debating it. But I do feel that if you are going to put yourself about as a public person on a television screen, there's a curiosity.

My two great treats in life are baked beans and vanilla ice-cream.

Travelling to make television programmes means I have some unusual food memories. In Pasto, Colombia, I was taken to a restaurant where I chose my meat for the evening from a cage of white rats. It tasted perfectly good - like rabbit.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

I love living on that stage. Without that, I'd die.

There is always a type of man who says he loves his fellow men, and expects to make a living at it.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

The association promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in any prior decisions.

Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul 'prays in us with unspeakable groanings'.

It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual.

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.

Being a father, well, I don't know if this is a change, but it makes me want to get out of here faster. Get off the clock. Just 'cause the baby is my reason for living, my reason for coming to work.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.

I have come to terms with a lot of things, because, when all's said and done, there's really very little one can do about a lot of things. You just accept them. The point is you just have to keep on working and you just have to keep on living.

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

Countries under foreign command quickly forget their history, their past, their tradition, their national symbols, their way of living, often their own literary language.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

In my fifty years of experience and memory, I have seen the most amazing increase in the standard of living of a people ever achieved anywhere in the world. This is why I am so sure that our system of free competition and industrial development is sound and must be preserved.

If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.

If you take the creation of music and the creation of your own life values as your overall goal, then living becomes a musical process.

Because the quality of living with nature and allowing it to manifest itself is different than the quality of living in a city, especially a dense city.