I think it's a terrible thing to write and not enjoy it. It's a sad thing. But of course a lot of people do work because they need to eat. And we all need to eat but that's not the only reason to work. You couldn't have paid me not to write.

Deep down I reckon the sweetest moment will come when it's finally all over. When at last I know that I can stop fighting. Of course it'll also be a little sad. The sweetest moments y'know always come with just a little sadness.

Of course it's true: the public want to see young people - young people are the people who go to the cinema. It's a sad fact of life but you've got to accept it and not whine about it.

Romantic music really stirs my soul. And of course I love Chinese music it makes me feel closer to home.

Even actresses that you really admire like Reese Witherspoon you think 'Another romantic comedy?' You see her in something like 'Walk the Line' and think 'God you're so great!' And then you think 'Why is she doing these stupid romantic comedies?' But of course it's for money and status.

I want to do the romantic comedies. You know the stuff that Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts or Reese Witherspoon would choose of course.

I'm very romantic and of course I want to be in love.

Over the course of time this gave us a deep respect for ideas both our own and those of others and an understanding that conflict through debate is a powerful means of revealing truth.

Of course the plea for respect for nonhuman life goes far beyond the scientific delight of familiarity with our planet mates. The nonhuman forms of life with which we 6 000 million talking upright apes share this finite planet are directly or indirectly connected to our well-being.

Nonetheless do I have respect for people who believe in the hereafter? Of course I do. I might add perhaps even a touch of envy too because of the solace.

Of course Einstein was a very great scientist indeed and I have enormous respect for him and great admiration for the discoveries he made. But he was very committed to a view of the objectivity of the physical world.

Against my will in the course of my travels the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

I think I'm fascinated by the power of religion in our culture. Like a lot of secular liberal people I ignored it for a long time. Lately of course just from a political perspective it's impossible to ignore.

The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.

And religion causes most of the problems war and economics of course and study your history or you're going to repeat it and if you're burning a Harry Potter book you need some serious counseling you don't get it you're missing the whole point.

I almost got a psychology degree I almost got a philosophy degree. I kept changing it so they couldn't make me graduate. I studied anthropology and eastern religion epistomology and astronomy... I took every interesting course I could find for nine years.

In course of time religion came with its rites invoking the aid of good spirits which were even more powerful than the bad spirits and thus for the time being tempered the agony of fears.

Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face some side of God.

The humanists' replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you'll either save yourself or you'll be immortal. Of course that's a total joke and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there's no ethical progress whatsoever.

It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion but of course I never have.

Then of course there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown and one has to let them go because they're just not making headway. But we have a very clear personal relationship with the authors.

I think our relationship with Epic had run its natural course and it happened to coincide with the fulfillment of our contract. We decided not to resign with them.

There must of course be a relationship between translating and making poems of your own but what it is I just don't know.

You've got to honor your relationship with your audience - that they sit down because they want to be entertained. And that doesn't mean you can't provoke them and antagonize them and challenge them in the course of the entertainment as long as you keep the entertainment part of the equation alive.