When I was in employment as a regular line pilot, I used to take unpaid leave to go on tour with Iron Maiden. I got lucky - they let me off

There are basically two categories of music: Metal and bullshit.

If heavy metal bands ruled the world, we'd be a lot better off.

We're better than Metallica. We're better musicians, better players. Put it this way, they can try to walk onstage after an Iron Maiden show if they want.

I find that fencing and training give me more stamina and help me deal with the craziness of being on the road so much.

Life is too short to do the things you don't love doing.

Everything you need to know about Iron Maiden is onstage.

Iron Maiden is an institution, and I'm delighted that I'm involved in it, but there was a time that I wasn't delighted so I quit.

Some of Eminem's rap songs kind of have the teenage love songs like the fifties love songs. It's kind of like domestic drama set to music. He is really good storyteller.

Rock music should be gross: that's the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers.

My dad always told me, 'I don't care what you do. Just aim to be the best at it. Even if it's the world's best window cleaner.'

I really should come with a warning label.

When I hang upside down and write the wrong way up, will my letters be upside down or the right way up?

What we call a poem is mostly what is not there on the page. The strength of any poem is the poems that it has managed to exclude.

If a writer publishes any thing that attracts notice, and is in itself just, but does not accord with our plan, we must endeavour to win him over, or decry him.

There's four biggies. There was Elizabeth I, George III, Victoria, and the current queen, who really dominated four eras.

It's such sport with these heroes of finance: they are like beads on a string — when one slips off, all the rest follow.

I always feel a certain sense of reverence in libraries, even small city ones that smell like homeless internet users.

burning with curiosity

We are put in situations to build our character... not destroy us.

I am the dragon, and you call me insane.