There's so much fear involved in trying to do something you don't know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure which most songwriters are.

I fear that the rising personal bankruptcies and repossessions are the first signs of bigger problems to come and personal debt - Gordon Brown's legacy to millions of Britain's families - will hang like a millstone around the neck of the British people for years to come.

I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product not a person so I've been going by Yasiin since '99. At first it was just for friends and family but now I'm declaring it openly.

When you advise any person you should be guided by the fear of God.

You can ask me pretty much anything. There'll be things I'll go 'That feels a little too personal.' But most things I don't have a fear of being asked about.

I am pretty fearless and you know why? Because I don't handle fear very well I'm not a good terrified person.

I don't have any fear of intimacy but rather thrive on it which is rare in a public person.

No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life.

The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward to have a low threshold of fear because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I do not say think as I think but think in my way. Fear no shadows least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.

We are afraid to care too much for fear that the other person does not care at all.

A person's fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.

We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal private solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.

Persons famous in the arts partake of the immortality of princes and are upon a footing with them.

It isn't false modesty when I say this but although I am supposed to be a famous person it doesn't mean anything to me. I just sit at home and work.

What Whitney Houston has accomplished will never be accomplished. She's the most famous person on the planet as far as vocaling and her songs. So I'm very happy that I can sit here and say I had a chance to know her. And I'm still dazed that she's gone. But she lives because her music is so powerful.

I don't have the life of a famous person. But I do feel like I've been able to connect with a lot of people.

When someone becomes successful or rich and famous people perceive that person as being different. But I'm the same guy I've always been.

I'm just not a private person. It's not like I do things because I want things to be public it's just that's my way of expressing myself and I happen to be very famous.

The excitement for me lies not so much in interviewing the hard-to-get famous person but the person whom you are about to discover. You know like maybe the character actors who are just coming into their own and you're realizing how great they are.

On the other hand when I give it closer thought I realize I'm not enough of a dictator to conduct an orchestra because it requires a pretty awful person. When you read these biographies of famous conductors they are all awful people who fail in their private relationships.

You don't have to be rich and famous. You just have to be an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. I'd like more people to know that it's there. Women's achievements still aren't recognised enough in many areas.

I'm terrified of being too famous. What I'm really afraid of is that the audiences will go into the theater and not be able to forget that it's me that fame will stand in the way of my acting. I want to keep being able to change into different shapes and different personalities.