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

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.

Nothing could be more regressive than carbon taxes.

I had too many big passions in life and it gets in the way of work. You can't concentrate properly on the one thing.

I don't plan out my visits rigorously, but I do have a list of about 125 New York galleries, alternative spaces, museums, and so forth that I visit regularly. That's the closest thing I have to a strategy: I go to a lot of places, many that artists don't visit.

If you got anything to you at all as an athlete and a competitor, you don't care what the circumstances are. You still got competition.

If you are African, the more educated you are, the less chances you have of getting a job.

To be honest, Peter Pan was one of those fairy tales that I sort of related to, and I think that's the case with a lot of kids. The whole idea of escapism really resonates with a lot of kids.

I don't concentrate on any one period of history; I like to locate my stories in wildly different eras and places. I seem to be drawn to large, sprawling, uncomfortable swaths of American history, finding embedded within them a tight narrative that involves strife, heroism, and survival under difficult circumstances.

Believing in God is a very intense inner struggle of mine. Its something I worry about a lot but which I dont have the answer to.

I always thought after 2002 that I'd hang up my skates and turn professional and just go on tour and do shows. But I don't know when it is enough. I mean, I still enjoy it. I'm the luckiest girl alive that I get to perform in front of thousands of people, do what I love doing.

Self-esteem, the kind that comes from finding the sweet spot between a healthy fondness for yourself and healthy self-skepticism, tends to get harder to come by the older we get.

I've thought about going back to school.

There is no day more joyful in my life than when I see all my family around me. That's the best it gets.

The key to competing and surviving against Wal-Mart is to focus your business into a niche or pocket where you can leverage your strengths in the local marketplace.

The will is your most important asset. If you lose it, you have lost everything.

Patriotism has no appeal to us; justice has. Party has no weight with us; principle has. Loyalty is meaningless; it depends on what one is loyal to.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

For 'Way Down Low', I was particularly inspired by a breakup I was going through and a transition I was making from Austin to New York.

If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say.

We have for a long time neglected our children. They are our richest treasure. We must give them time, attention and the love of our pure, unselfish hearts.

When I left school, I got a job in a shoe shop and I used to save 15 quid a week and pay for my own singing and acting lessons.

I had my electricity turned off three times because I never had time to pay my bills. It was a joke. I'm making a ton of money, and I'm walking around my apartment with flashlights.

When you lose your freedom, you are alone with your emotions and reactions... you can see, for example, the bad reactions you have in front of others or the way you could be dismissive or harsh.