What should I have known or written had I been a quiet mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel and turmoil or there is no existence.

When I was deputy chairman I could travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh without leaving Tory land. In a two-week period I covered every constituency in which we had an MP. There were 14. Now we have only one. We appear to have given up.

Each day as I travel through downtown Tucson I am amazed at how quickly the most ancient of human behaviors have changed. For as long as there have been Homo sapiens - roughly 200 000 years - people have filled their lives principally with two activities: talking directly with other people and doing physical things.

My kids started school so having a strong base in Melbourne has been a key priority. I'm not daunted by the travel. People say 'It's so far to Australia ' and I say 'You get on the plane you eat well you sleep you wake up - and you're there.'

I enjoy the preparatory elements of travel - packing my bags and choosing my outfits - but my favourite part is getting there.

There are so many things I want to do. Like I want to get an artist a musician a photographer and a bunch of dancers that I know and just travel across Africa and just film it and just see what happens. Do and learn as much as I possibly can. Luckily I have a lot more time.

I've three children three grandchildren I work I travel and I'm very happily married. I'm very satisfied and happy with my life and there really isn't anything I want.

I always want to give my best and do the best I can. I know when I have sung my best and when I haven't. There can be stresses and hassles with time travel and press attention. I just have to adapt and find a way of dealing with it.

Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists and there are natural piano players and I think guitar implies travel a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town.

I grew up in South Africa and I would look at maps and we were at the bottom of the world. There was this whole thing up there. I was always reading encyclopedias about the world. So travel was something I was always attracted to.

There is no budget for travel for a Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Travel in all the four quarters of the earth yet you will find nothing anywhere. Whatever there is is only here.

In America there are two classes of travel - first class and with children.

I like ice hockey but it's a frustrating game to watch. It's hard to keep your eyes on both the puck and the players and too much time passes between scoring in hockey. There are usually more fights than there are points.

There are no secrets that time does not reveal.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough but you shiver. You are fed yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time the Bastard Time.

When I write stuff and I help cast it I turn away good people all the time. I may turn them down because this one's too tall and that one doesn't have a high enough voice or this one looks to old to match up with that one - there's a billion reasons not to hire somebody.

Because when you have millions of people with this kind of need for gratification and the culture is saying that it's possible for everyone to satisfy all of their needs and desires all of the time there are obviously going to be clashes - clashes of ego.

I feel there are two people inside me - me and my intuition. If I go against her she'll screw me every time and if I follow her we get along quite nicely.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

Young poets bewail the passing of love old poets the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.

There's much to be said for feeling numb. Time passes more quickly. You eat less and because numbness encourages laziness you do fewer things good or bad and the world's probably a better place for it.

I try to forget about the expectation that's out there and the audience listening for the next thing so that I'm not trying to please them. I've spent a huge amount of time not communicating with those folks and denying that they exist.

Life is a series of steps. Things are done gradually. Once in a while there is a giant step but most of the time we are taking small seemingly insignificant steps on the stairway of life.