If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.

I didn't like the nervous tension of being a public person.

You can (be a middle-aged comic) if you work very hard at it, because comedy is really hard.

Absolute faith can blind you to the consequences of the actions you allow. It can tell you it's okay to drop bombs on another country, or that it's okay to hate a group of people such as homosexuals.

In 1995, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to practice what I preached. I had always said to 'believe in God' and 'don't give up' to little kids who had been diagnosed with cancer. I then thought if I can't call on that same God and same strength that I told people about, I would be a liar and a phony.

Campaigning against religion can be socially counter-productive. If teachers take the uncompromising line that God and Darwinism are irreconcilable, many young people raised in a faith-based culture will stick with their religion and be lost to science.

The friendship of Shostakovich cast a brilliant light over my whole life and whose spiritual qualities captured my soul once and for all time.

People were stopping me on the street to say, 'Oh my God, it's Crazy Eyes!' Which is kind of a funny thing to have people shout at you on the street.