The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door

Life's too short to make filo pastry.

"I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country."

Regrets and mistakes are the touchstone of spiritual growth.

"I'm fond of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They are kind of the John and Paul of the global development stage, in my opinion.

"But the point is, Lennon and McCartney changed my interior world - Blai...

"If Donald Trump is president of the United States, it will be the end of the world. And he’s also the best thing to happen to the Democrats ever.”

Alda appeared on Inside The Actor's Studio and said, "Listening is being able to be changed by the person."

How do you stop a polite conversation about politics, even with your nearest and dearest, descending into a slanging match?

The only failsafe answer of course is not to talk about politics at all.

“Racism is like cricket. It was invented here but perfected in Australia.”

I can’t stress enough the importance of appreciating and even loving where you are. Happiness is relative. There will always be something more, something bigger or better. The more you focus on the ...

"I play my best in finals. That's why I'm Number 1, you know. There's no secret."

Gerald Kaufman has crawled so far up the backside of NATO that only the soles of his feet are visible.

On 20 March 2010, collecting a lifetime achievement award from the Bradford International Film Festival, John Hurt said that he continued to want to act:

"I can't see any other reason to be alive u...

"I invented World Music. I was the first person to use Plasticine in a video"

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.

The Rough Guide to Rock has this quote from David Bowie:

"I once asked John Lennon what he thought of what I do. He said 'It's great, but it's just rock 'n' roll with lipstick on."

There is enough means to feed the planet but two thirds of the world lives below the poverty line

From Tony Blair's speech to the TUC, September 1995:
"But what has come home to me more than anything else is the utter futility of Opposition. I did not join the Labour Party to protest. I joined it...

It's sink or swim, and you've most probably picked up by now that I don't do life jackets.

Lisa Francesca Nand (Chessy to Talksport listeners) wrote an article for Radiojam, which quoted Tommy Boyd on the future of the talk radio format: "I wonder if we're going to let the boat sail without...

"Isn't the Ego a wonderful thing?"

"Vote Labour and you build castles in the air. Vote Conservative and you can live in them."

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

"You'll like this, not a lot, but you'll like it." was Paul Daniels's catchphrase.

"Try not to worry about the small things in life that go wrong. You are only on the planet once. Get the best out of it."

“It incrementally came to me that when I audition I’m not trying to get a job, but to give them something, my acting. The victory is not ‘Did I beat that other guy out?’ but ‘Did I present t...

"Once you get into your stride, the camera becomes like another person in the room. It's like being in a very small theatre where there is no getting away with anything because the audience is centime...

Love’s about finding a connection and keeping that connection.

"Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi-cabs and cutting hair."

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them

Lenny Bruce said of his own work: "All my humour is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back o...

Regarding David Gest's marriage to Liza Minnelli:

"We were taking bets in our pew about how long it would last ... that [wedding] kiss wasn't a kiss, it was like sucking chrome off a Cadillac."

‘if you can soundtrack somebody’s memory, that is a beautiful thing’

“I was always told by my Russian partners that I had to have a vodka, because it was like an anti-inflammatory so it made the muscles relax and calm.”

In today’s world, hospitality and love are our most formidable weapons against hatred and extremism.

If you nod your head any longer I'm going to put you on the back seat of my bloody car.

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.

"When I got to drama school there were all these people going 'Oh, my Dad used to watch Ken Loach films' and I would be thinking, who is Ken Loach?"

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea".

Asked by The Guardian whether The X Factor is having a negative influence on the music business, Steve Brookstein replied: "No, it is more having a negative effect on Christmas. Simon Cowell bought th...

The lesson I've learned are you've always got to be proud of what you've done and enjoy what you're doing rather than fixate on what might be in the future.

"Celebrity is a lot like ice cream, you know, it melts and then you've got to live with yourself."

Hiroshima Mon Amour, Les Quatre cent coups, Les Amants were tremendously important events. These days, because of television and the incredible saturation of images, I'm not sure this would happen any...

'Be like a duck, my mother used to tell me. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.'

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

Clearly, I don't think anybody in this city is shocked about what consenting adults do. As long as you don't involve children, animals or vegetables they leave people to get on and live their own life...

The first rule of survival is learning to control your emotions.

"Everyone wants to understand art. Why don't people try to understand the song of a bird? Why do people love the night, the flowers and everything around us without insisting on understanding them? Bu...

"Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration."

Mhairi Black said in her maiden speech in the House of Commons: "Tony Benn once said that in politics there are weathercocks and signposts. Weathercocks will spin in whatever direction the wind of pub...

"I guess that when you get into your fifties you just have to keep reinventing yourself as an actor. They kind of don't know what to do with you. Thankfully, Judi Dench and Helen Mirren have shown the...

Scammers are getting smarter and the scams are becoming more personal, which make them more believable.

Martha Kearney told The Telegraph: "The hardest job to get is your first. be persistent ...Get your foot in the door. Be inquiring."

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

"There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to suc...

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

Maurice Greene once said:

"If you want to be number one, you have to train like you're number two"

I think greed is very corrupting and one of the sad things is that greed is so unimaginative. Sometimes I see people spend fortunes on preposterous toys or daft experiences and think, “You could do ...

On Rupert Murdoch:"one of the most impressive and significant figures of the last 50 years"

"I like working on stage because there's something very immediate about it, that interaction with an audience where you immediately hear their reaction, or feel them, whether they're with you."

"When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale."

‘I would much rather someone say that is a George Ezra song than be famous’

John Banville told Mariella Frostrup on The Book Show:

"If you want to write noir fiction, Dublin in the 1950s is the place to set it ... all that cigarette smoke, all that fog, all that guilt, all...

"I make films because if I don't make them then I don't have anything to distract me. My whole life I am constantly fighting all kinds of depression and terror and anxiety and I find that, like a ment...

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

"My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop benevolence ... in a gentle way you can shake the world."

"Giving young men what they want doesn't generally bring out the best in them. Success is almost guaranteed to mess you up more than failure."

When you want to be ranked number 1 in the world, when you want to be Olympic gold medallist and you want to make history you're really careful setting your goals along the way. You take small steps i...

"Acting is a job like any other. It takes practice to be good at it. After that you learn your lines, concentrate on nothing else, get dressed and go home."

Referring to the 'Beat' writers, Truman Capote remarked: "This isn't writing at all - it's typing."

In 2005, before the India v Pakistan test series, Zaheer Abbas advised his countrymen:
"Glue yourselves to the Indian pitches to the extent they have to call the police to budge you."

But I could not more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensible for me to ke...

"The maintenance of the tradition of fashion is in the nature of an act of faith. In a century which attempts to tear the heart out of every mystery, fashion guards its secret well, and is the best po...

Without good time management the plan fails and you end up not getting anything done. You have to know what you want to do, how much time you've got to do it and then sit down and work out the best wa...

"Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government."

Frank Zappa described rock journalists as "people, who can't write, interviewing people, who can't talk, for people, who can't read."

"We find ourselves in a market system which seems to have taken its rules of trade from Alice in Wonderland ... To a bystander like me, those who made £190m deliberately underselling the shares of HB...

"The only exercise I get these days is walking behind the coffins of my friends who take exercise."

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time - never. These allegations are false."

I’m not a rearview mirror person. I only go forward. I’ve worked with some extraordinary people and loved it. Some of them have left this earth. That makes me sad but all the more appreciative.

From an interview with Scott Davidson of Regeneration: "Take a project like Band Aid for instance. Many people worked very hard for Band Aid, and OK, it raised millions of pounds, but then more money ...

"As an actor you have to communicate all the time. So when I get home I'd rather dig the garden or take the dog for a walk than, say, go out to lunch and start communicating again."

"I often suffer from the opposite of loneliness, which is; where I am with a bunch of people and I wish I was on my own."

"I think the openness that might be necessary to be a good actor can be lethal in your real life."

Alfred Hitchcock once remarked:

"Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like a character, he just tears him up."

Bogart described himself as: "Democrat in politics, Episcopalian by upbringing. dissenter by disposition."

Beacham once said of Joan Collins:
"Joan Collins is like the old children's nursery rhyme: 'When she is good, she is very, very good. And when she is bad, she is horrid.' I can't remember how the who...

"You learn your lessons from the mistakes you make, not the things you achieve."

Freud remarked in 1933 when there was a public burning of his books in Berlin: "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."

Creativity can be applied to anything and everything we do. Creative thinking just means looking at a situation differently; whether we're faced with a problem, a decision, or a chance to have fun, a ...

"To be a pair skater, you have to be a little bit crazy" - Amani Fancy quoted in https://theorbital.co.uk/

"If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit"

From Goodbye to Berlin: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."

The key to life is to make your own path, set your own rules."

"It seems to me, that it's much more important to be happy than ordinary."

On the share collapse (Oct 1987) Blair said:
" the City whizz-kids, with salaries only fractionally less than their greed, now seem not only morally dubious, but incompetent"

In discussing School for Seduction, Kelly Brook told the BBC:

"Regardless of what hair colour you have, what you look like, what accent you have, what you do for a living even, it's all about how y...

"The Sun once did 20 things you never knew about Angus Deayton – and I didn't know 16 of them ..."

"To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now."

"You spend your life working on your craft - I started acting as a seven-year-old - and then, all of a sudden, you're an 'overnight success'."

Roger Federer In an interview with the Sunday Times after his defeat by Marat Safin in the semi-final at the Australian Open in 2005:

"...the more success you have the easier it is to deal with def...

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one d...

Upon being given the freedom of Preston, Freddie Flintoff noted:

"That means I can drive a flock of sheep through the town centre, drink for free in no less than 64 pubs and get a lift home with th...

"My own experience has shown that you can survive after going through terrible times at home and I give my utmost support to those women and young people living with the threat of domestic abuse... Do...

I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.

"I like to show that it's possible to be big and be fit. I have a healthy lifestyle. I don't smoke, don't drink and I eat well. You don't have to be skinny to take part in sport."

"It's a small world but you wouldn't want to paint it"

Steve Guttenberg told Metro:

"Typecasting is a good thing. It's good to be known for what you do. It's good Xerox is known for its copying machines and it's good Jim Carrey is known for comedy. Tha...

"He would have to stand on a tanner to see over a thruppenny-bit"

"If you have the most beautiful castle with nobody you love inside, it is shit. That is why you must spend less money on decoration and more money on finding the person you love. And then, once you’...

"If you had been at the Last Supper, you would have asked for ketchup."

"I'm quite urban. I don't like to be too far away from an espresso machine."

"Human beings are brilliantly creative at finding ways to pass time in unconstructive ways."

"The Fame is about how anyone can feel famous."

Dustin Hoffman told The Sunday Times: "I get up at 4.30 every morning. It's the best time in the world. You see the break of dawn, and you're on your own and I have my bachelorhood back. For those two...