To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a religion.

I remember when we ignored Europe and we were totally committed to the Commonwealth and the former Empire, and thought imperial preference was the only thing which enabled us to survive, that was a mistake, and it's a similar mistake to feel Britain can't be a hugely successfully country - economically and in any other way - outside the E.U.

I'm sure Mark Carney is a very clever young man, but I think that the government would be mad to move from inflation targeting to money GDP targeting.

We already have a sabbatical system. It's called opposition, and I've had enough of it.

There is always, of course, a limit in a democracy as to what is politically possible, so you have to respect that limit. But in my experience, governments tend to be too timid.

I can't go to a restaurant or a hotel now without looking at the architecture and wondering how it would look if a character jumped off something - or crashed through it.

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

That's why people listen to music or look at paintings. To get in touch with that wholeness.

Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.

My idea about the role of artists is to get people to look at things in a way that's different than the way they normally would if they are being told how to think, what to do. I think when people receive information through art, they are more open-minded.

In winter, the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse.