As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.

Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

When I first came to Oxford, I struggled to feel comfortable in an Anglican, public school-dominated institution.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

My theme is, 'The spirit of friendship is the balance of life.' Not money. Not the World Series. It's friendship. The relationships I have with people, that's enough to keep me happy.

You never suffer from a money problem, you always suffer from an idea problem.

Hip-hop from the beginning has always been aspirational. It always broke that notion that an artist can't think about money as well. Just so long as you separate the two and you're not making music with business in mind. At some point, it has to be real when they touch it, when they listen to it. Something has to resonate with them that's real.

I have a bunch of movies that are, like, two minutes from being green-lit, or that they've maybe even told me are green-lit. But I never believe it until I see the money.