I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.

Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.

Forgiveness isn't about condoning what has happened to you or someone else's actions against you.

I got into shape because I took kick-boxing lessons every day to prepare for a fight scene with Taylor Lautner. I really wanted to lie down and eat Chinese food but I kick-boxed every morning and ran. If someone was filming you with your kit off you'd do the same thing.

If you go out to dinner with someone you find out what they prefer in food. We ought to be able to have a conversation to find out what people prefer when it comes to sex.

Men can absent themselves from real life for their art more easily. Women are anchored into the quotidian business of getting food on the table making sure everybody's socks match the soccer gear is ready. I admire idealists but they're usually enabled by someone who holds the tether on their balloon who pays the bills and sweeps up after them.

In New York I'll walk down the street and someone will say 'Nice show ' and that's it. If I'm at a food festival it's open season.

The best thing you can do for someone is make them a beautiful plate of food. How else can you invade someone's body without actually touching them?

I don't let it bother me too much if someone doesn't like me. I just figure there's no accounting for taste. It's not me it's my acting. It's like if someone doesn't like someone's food they just don't like my acting.

Don't try to be the next Rachael Ray or Bobby Flay we already have those people. We want someone who is going to make their own mark on 'Food Network.'

I tell my students it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see who's very far away who's a different color who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

If you really want to make a friend go to someone's house and eat with him... the people who give you their food give you their heart.

Overall I think I'm in pretty good shape but I'm not really someone that is gung-ho or a fitness fanatic.

For me triathlons were something that was down to me and my fitness. Now I really enjoy the pain in the triathlon of chasing someone down. It's a bit like chasing down Nico Rosberg in the last few laps at Silverstone - it makes you feel alive.

I thought I did well for someone who has been out for 10 or 11 months. Then I was sub against Liverpool and tried to play for the guys and work on my fitness.

I fear dying in the middle of a book. It would be so annoying to write 80 000 words and not get to the end. I'm phobic about it. So when I'm writing a book I leave messages all over the house for people to know how the story ends and then someone can finish it for me.

We've all had that fear that despair of losing someone or this fierce desire because it's not reciprocated. The less reciprocation there is the more desire we have.

I have a fear of poverty in old age. I have this vision of myself living in a skip and eating cat food. It's because I'm freelance and I've never had a proper job. I don't have a pension and my savings are dwindling. I always thought someone would just come along and look after me.

Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear but the fact is the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte my first child was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.

Can someone within that society walk into the town square and say what they want without fear of being punished for his or her views? If so then that society is a free society. If not it is a fear society.

Americans are terrified because so many of them have been laid off in recent years and months and they fear that they may be next. Even if they have not been laid off or have not known anyone laid off they definitely know someone who has lost his home.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy.