People have become less discriminating listeners, which is tragic, really. There's a lot of emperor's new clothes out there, whether they're female or male solo acts. That bothers me. It's hard to break through, and it's like climbing Mount Everest if you actually do.

At the age of 15 months my daughter was diagnosed with very bad asthma, and essentially I put my career on hold for a good eight years.

I'm used to adversity and working really well in difficult situations. It was hard for me to accept the success.

But looking back, the fact was that I had a couple of big hits too quickly and it was simply too much for an introvert like me to handle.

The inexorable compulsion of all things is towards health or destruction, life or death, and we hasten our joys or our woes to the logical extreme. It is urgent, therefore, that we be joyous if we wish to live.

I cannot belong to a nation which permits such barbarities as stoning to death and amputation - I don't care what religion it is.

The death penalty confronts us with a penetrating moral question: Can even the monstrous crimes of those who are condemned to death and are truly guilty of such crimes erase their sacred dignity as human beings and their intrinsic right to life?

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.