Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.

People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book' but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me because in my view fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.

My name became known because I was one might say accidentally the target of state repression and because so many people throughout the country and other parts of the world organized around the demand for my freedom.

Yes we have the freedom to do what we please but it only works because we don't do everything we might please - we should exercise some degree of personal and corporate responsibility.

The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened.

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

For in the end freedom is a personal and lonely battle and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.

We all thought of chicken as lean protein-rich food that's good for weight watching but the truth is chicken might actually be making us fatter!

It has long been known for sure that the sight of tasty food makes a hungry man's mouth water also lack of appetite has always been regarded as an undesirable phenomenon from which one might conclude that appetite is essentially linked with the process of digestion.

But once in a while you might see me at In and Out Burger they make the best fast food hamburgers around.

I heard about the project over a year before we began. My American agent said 'Oh you might want to read 'In Cold Blood' because they're talking about you for Capote but the script's with Johnny Depp and Sean Penn at the moment.' So these things take their time to dribble down the food chain.

When I pair food and wine I start with the food. If I have a beautiful roasted bird I might choose a Cabernet or Pinot Noir or maybe a Syrah depending on the sauce and what is in my cellar.

The American public is not aware that there might be potential allergenic and toxic reactions. With regular food at least people know which foods they have an allergy to.

Food is a fairly significant aspect of my life. I have struggled mightily with food. With my weight. And I'm conscious of it. So I have a sensitivity to people who struggle with their weight.

I think what I do differently from a lot of TV chefs is that I break down barriers and make fine food more accessible to the regular person who might be intimidated. I try hard particularly with wine to make it not intimidating. It's sort of a teaching job.

Cats are very independent animals. They're very sexy if you want. Dogs are different. They're familiar. They're obedient. You call a cat you go 'Cat come here.' He doesn't come to you unless you have something in your hand that he thinks might be food. They're very free animals and I like that.

I said to my friends that if I was going to starve I might as well starve where the food is good.

I suffer panic attacks which has made me really conscious about my fitness and I have become addicted to jogging. It might sound odd but a lot of good has come out of it. My fans send letters saying they have taken up jogging because I do it.

Fear is the enemy. I distrust it. Any feeling or decision I make that might be motivated by fear I quickly reassess.

I know a lot of people fear the rougher types who might be at a state school but surely it is better to know who they are and how to deal with them than for that kind of child to appear as a completely different species to yours.

I had a fear of becoming anything a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor but if you become a doctor that's your specialty in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open your field is the entire human condition.

I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.