With torture ,as with making love, foreplay is the all important factor

Some people standby you in your darkest hour while others walk away; only a select few march towards you and become even closer friends.

I have discovered with advancing years that few things are entirely black or white, but more often different shades of grey.

I feel I have had a very interesting life, but I am rather hoping there is still more to come. I still haven't captained the England cricket team, or sung at Carnegie Hall!

If you make a deal with a fool, don't be surprised when they act foolishly.

Time spent on preparation is seldom wasted.

Making a million legally has always been difficult. Making a million illegally has always been a little easier. Keeping a million when you have made it is perhaps the most difficult of all.

What I have found is that real friends stand by you.

While there may not be a book in every one of us, there is so often a damned good short story.

we all suffer in our different ways from being prisoners of birth.

I put £150,000 into the stage production of Grease and have got back £1.5 million so far. It has been a fantastic success.

The ambitious will always be first in the crowd; he presseth forward, he looketh not behind him. More anguish is it to his mind to see one before him, than joy to leave thousands at a distance

When we transcend our own thoughts, we get in touch with the womb of creation.

This race is never grateful: from the first, One fills their cup at supper with pure wine, Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge, In bitter vinegar.

I don't think I know anyone who has a steady job in Montreal.

The thought of today cannot be expressed in the language of yesterday.

Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong, but of the weak.

Leaders should leave behind them assets and a legacy.

There's quite a lot of bad stuff written about me. My wife even says a lot of bad stuff about me. But she is wonderful.

Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.

So I just let go with one hand, and just sort of swung around, looked at the Earth below and the black space above and the sun over my shoulder. And, I mean, it was this incredible, spectacular view.