I never saw myself as an individual who had any particular leadership powers.

Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way including George Bush senior Gerald Ford and others including myself and Bill Clinton.

I wanted to contribute my time myself my knowledge my love because Haiti is my everything.

He surprised me by his familiarity with details of movements and battles which I did not suppose had come to his knowledge. As he kept me talking for over half an hour I flattered myself that what I had to say interested him.

I don't keep my secrets or my knowledge to myself.

The whole Twitter phenomenon is really indicative of what's happening in this country. And I say this in condemnation of myself as much as anyone else - we are growing into a nation that has no time desire or capacity for truth. All we can handle is 140 characters of knowledge.

My musical knowledge is so bad it's embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion rather than keys and tempo.

Even though I'm a hype man myself I like the practicality of it all. People who understand how to turn a profit. At the end of the day this is still business so I'm looking for real practical knowledge of how to actually make money not necessarily raise it.

In the past I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.

My philosophy of leadership is to surround myself with good people who have ability judgment and knowledge but above all a passion for service.

That's the way I got along in life. I don't ever remember being particularly jealous of anybody because I figured if I can't do it myself I don't deserve to get it.

It was my mother's idea. Her feeling was that I didn't have the intelligence to pick a trade myself.

I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

I used to make up stuff in my bio all the time that I used to be a professional ice-skater and stuff like that. I found it so inspirational. Why not make myself cooler than I am?

Heaven knows I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.

When I was on my own in a hotel room in Romania I had the imagination to keep myself occupied.

We didn't have television until I was about eight years old so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things and the comics that I immersed myself in as a child.

Just about this time when in imagination I was so great a warrior I had good use in real life for more strength as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse but instead had myself to protect my brother two years my junior.

I always wanted to ride a dragon myself so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.

I still have a photo on my wall of the greatest idol I will ever have in my life and it's myself at eight. Because that's when the forces of imagination have the same value as the real world when they're an instrument of survival: when my mother disappeared and I imagined a mother. That was me at my best.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

I'm a light sleeper. I've never been one of those people who can put their head down and suddenly everything disappears. Nighttime is the time I get most scared anxious or worried. In those darker moments before waking or sleeping is when I feel most I don't know I can turn on myself and my imagination can take me dark places.

I know how fiction matters to me because if I want to express myself I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me it's not imagination. It's just a way of watching.