If it's really so wonderful that both partners have to work to make a living to pay for their house for health insurance someone is obviously going to get the short end of the stick.

The mindset of chasing that next #1 record doesn't exist for me anymore. It's more about being a well-rounded entertainer than being a pop artist. Obviously it would be wonderful to have a hit record but I don't base my happiness on that anymore. It's about the accomplishment of a project that satisfies me. I just want to enjoy the ride.

I really think that there was a great advantage in many ways to being a woman. I think we are a lot better at personal relationships and then have the capability obviously of telling it like it is when it's necessary.

Pretty much at all times music motivates me. How can I say this without sounding in any way proud of myself? Obviously I've always written songs that are critical of our government and talk about our times. Hopefully you attempt to be timeless while doing it.

Obviously a Conservative government will always leave taxes lower than they have been under Labour. Those things go with the territory of the Conservative Party.

Certainly it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising there's obviously a lot of deception.

Hope is a state of mind not of the world. Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they're honest about everything.

The Marshall Plan was after destruction and the U.S. came to our help and obviously this was very very important for the future of Europe. I think now we have all the capabilities of doing it on our own and in a sense we have to.

The thing I thought about doing it was it's Comic Relief and you've got to be funny. So although I did try to sing properly it obviously has hilarious results when you can't sing.

The comedians I liked were Bill Cosby and Steven Wright like just always as a comedic actor. I always liked Gary Larson who's really funny for a cartoonist obviously.

I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction obviously but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty the noblest cause of them all.

Edible substances evoke the secretion of thick concentrated saliva. Why? The answer obviously is that this enables the mass of food to pass smoothly through the tube leading from the mouth into the stomach.

I'm into very colorful food. Obviously lots of flavor but I think we eat with our eyes first so it has to look great. The presentation has to be great.

We all know that Americans love their statistics - in sport obviously. And in finance too.

If the markets had behaved badly that would obviously add to people's sense of alarm... but there has been a lot of reassurance coming particularly in the way the Brits handled all this. There seems to be no great fear that something like that is going to happen here.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration obviously perspiration doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

There are a lot of famous comedians from Liverpool then obviously the Beatles and the football club. That's what people in Liverpool are passionate about.

Well family is obviously the most important. There was a time when I thought football was the most important.

We'll sort of get over the marriage first and then maybe look at the kids. But obviously we want a family so we'll have to start thinking about that.

And obviously with hindsight now now knowing what went on in the company it would have been absolutely appropriate back then for us to have the chief executive of the company most senior person in the United Kingdom come and answer for the policy they were pursuing. And we ducked that and frankly that's a failure of Parliament.

I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.

You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination - at the same time you want to be truthful to the predecessors because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent.