Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I'm not religious but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.

The most watched programme on the BBC after the news is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

I'm not a sad person upset the whole time but I seem to be quite emotional.

People say oh it's a shame you're not nostalgic about the '60s. Well actually it's quite good when you think of it. Wouldn't it be sad if I was sitting here wishing it back?

Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.

I feel quite sad for the young musicians coming up because they may never get to pay their rent properly. It doesn't matter what the genre nowadays it's so much harder than it ever was.

As a kid I quite fancied the romantic Bohemian idea of being an artist. I expect I thought I could escape from the difficulties of maths and spelling. Maybe I thought I would avoid the judgement of the establishment.

I did send a girl a plane ticket asking her for a visit I guess that's quite romantic.

I'm pretty upfront about my love and admiration for the military. One of the perks of making movies is that you get to sort of follow your own passions and I believe quite passionately that we don't pay enough attention and respect to our veterans. Not just our wounded veterans but all veterans.

I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect because it's every day anyway no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems or sometimes not.

I think more and more respect has been accorded to teachers and quite rightly so.

I admire the Elsie Tanners and Barbara Windsors of the world: people who have crawled back from the abyss. I'm quite camp in that respect.

In fact I am quite snappy and irritable and I don't know if I'd like to make myself worse in that respect.

I think that people who live in cultures without quite so much privilege opportunity or grandiosity have a little bit more respect for the workings of destiny and the limitations that people can find themselves in through no fault of their own.

I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people including fundamentalists are quite intelligent many of them are highly educated and they should be treated with complete respect.

I have quite a few different Bibles. Having rejected my parents' religion I still think the King James Bible is the most important work of literature in English. None of us can help being influenced by it.

When I'm not writing I read loads of fiction but I've been writing quite constantly lately so I've been reading a lot of nonfiction - philosophy religion science history social or cultural studies.

I mean I went to a Catholic boys' school for a year but that was to play hockey. Religion class was quite contentious for me.

If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion as organized in its Churches has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

I have quite a robust relationship with regret. You simply don't know what the alternative would have been.

Well I think if you really go out with someone for quite a long time you do get to know each other very very well you go through the good times you go through the bad times. You know both personally but also within a relationship as well.

I find it quite hard to sum up my relationship in a sound bite. I feel that it trivializes it for other people's pleasure. It's an adventure.

There's such an extreme feeling to be in love especially in quite an emotionally destructive relationship where you're both kind of really bad for each other but you love each other so much. Those extreme emotions I think can only be described with extreme imagery.