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.

Laying tracks gives you freedom without being too obvious.

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.

One can't relive one's life. Forgiveness is not what's difficult one's always too ready to forgive. And it does no good that's obvious.

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.

I had some of the students in my finance class actually do some empirical work on capital structures to see if we could find any obvious patterns in the data but we couldn't see any.

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.

Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.

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.

Yet it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love lust longing joy rage fear triumph yearning and confusion.

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 I would say that we're regular people first of all and we're normal and it's obvious by some of the things that have happened just because our name is famous we're not immune to tragedy.

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

Being rich is a good thing. Not just in the obvious sense of benefitting you and your family but in the broader sense. Profits are not a zero sum game. The more you make the more of a financial impact you can have.

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.

Purity is not imposed upon us as though it were a kind of punishment it is one of those mysterious but obvious conditions of that supernatural knowledge of ourselves in the Divine which we speak of as faith. Impurity does not destroy this knowledge it slays our need for it.

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.

Life it is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics it's about experience it's about participation it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

Obviously my life and my job in 2010 is very different from Peggy's experience in the 1960s. I exist in a world that enjoys more equality between men and women. But I don't take any of that into my performance. I just want to play the character as who she is as an individual - scene to scene.