The Marshall Plan was after destruction and the U.S. came to our help and obviously this was very very important for the future of Europe. I think now we have all the capabilities of doing it on our own and in a sense we have to.

All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

No writing musicals is the hardest thing in the world. And it was really funny because I remember when the South Park movie came out there were some critics that said 'Well it's obvious that in order to get it to be 90 minutes they filled some time with music.'

The thing I thought about doing it was it's Comic Relief and you've got to be funny. So although I did try to sing properly it obviously has hilarious results when you can't sing.

The comedians I liked were Bill Cosby and Steven Wright like just always as a comedic actor. I always liked Gary Larson who's really funny for a cartoonist obviously.

I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction obviously but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

Laying tracks gives you freedom without being too obvious.

There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty the noblest cause of them all.

One can't relive one's life. Forgiveness is not what's difficult one's always too ready to forgive. And it does no good that's obvious.

Edible substances evoke the secretion of thick concentrated saliva. Why? The answer obviously is that this enables the mass of food to pass smoothly through the tube leading from the mouth into the stomach.

I'm into very colorful food. Obviously lots of flavor but I think we eat with our eyes first so it has to look great. The presentation has to be great.

I had some of the students in my finance class actually do some empirical work on capital structures to see if we could find any obvious patterns in the data but we couldn't see any.

We all know that Americans love their statistics - in sport obviously. And in finance too.

If the markets had behaved badly that would obviously add to people's sense of alarm... but there has been a lot of reassurance coming particularly in the way the Brits handled all this. There seems to be no great fear that something like that is going to happen here.

Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration obviously perspiration doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

Yet it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love lust longing joy rage fear triumph yearning and confusion.

There are a lot of famous comedians from Liverpool then obviously the Beatles and the football club. That's what people in Liverpool are passionate about.

Well I would say that we're regular people first of all and we're normal and it's obvious by some of the things that have happened just because our name is famous we're not immune to tragedy.

Well family is obviously the most important. There was a time when I thought football was the most important.

Being rich is a good thing. Not just in the obvious sense of benefitting you and your family but in the broader sense. Profits are not a zero sum game. The more you make the more of a financial impact you can have.

We'll sort of get over the marriage first and then maybe look at the kids. But obviously we want a family so we'll have to start thinking about that.

Purity is not imposed upon us as though it were a kind of punishment it is one of those mysterious but obvious conditions of that supernatural knowledge of ourselves in the Divine which we speak of as faith. Impurity does not destroy this knowledge it slays our need for it.

And obviously with hindsight now now knowing what went on in the company it would have been absolutely appropriate back then for us to have the chief executive of the company most senior person in the United Kingdom come and answer for the policy they were pursuing. And we ducked that and frankly that's a failure of Parliament.