As a shy kid growing up in Sheffield I fantasized about how it would be great to be famous so I wouldn't actually have to talk to people and feel awkward. And of course as we all know from fairy stories when you achieve that ambition you find out you don't want it.

There is a common theme though in the stories I have told which are usually associations of characters or families that are formed outside of a family circle.

What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don't write the book where it's a conspiracy reaching the prime minister I don't write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes.

AP promoted me to the White House beat because I knew Clinton his family friends and staff better than anybody in the national press corps. Those contacts helped me break a few stories and get my career in Washington jump-started.

There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.

The conversion of agnostic High Tories to the Anglican church is always rather suspect. It seems too pat and predictable too clearly a matter of politics rather than faith.

Why do we capital-N Nerds love Mars so much? Because it's beautiful it's tough it's buried in our mythic childhood memories. It's covered with human triumphs but also with sad stories of failure.

There are only really a few stories to tell in the end and betrayal and the failure of love is one of those good stories to tell.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

I have been blessed in many ways and one of those is to have been born in Africa for me a great treasure house of stories. I have been researching it since my infancy reading about it talking to men and women who have spent their lives in this land living it as I have and loving it as I do. I write almost entirely from my own experience.

You can use your means in a good and bad way. In German-speaking art we had such a bad experience with the Third Reich when stories and images were used to tell lies. After the war literature was careful not to do the same which is why writers began to reflect on the stories they told and to make readers part of their texts. I do the same.

Stories have always been the things that entertain me and make me feel happy and sad and move me and give me the experience of being able to live many lives in one lifetime. It's the best thing about being alive.

There's a positive side to film and television the sense of feeding into the theater... Your fans will follow you hopefully and be open-minded to see you play other things and experience other stories you want to tell.

You know it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope someday we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.

Feudal societies don't create great cinema we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who ' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.

In the environmental movement every time you lose a battle it's for good but our victories always seem to be temporary and we keep fighting them over and over again.

This journey is not over. Our education initiatives have so much momentum and we're committed to sharing even more stories from the Arctic when we return.

There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education started to learn then went on the pill the whole thing and so there are today a lot more women writers editors producers and so a lot more women's stories. God the BBC's practically run by women.

The Tories and the Lib Dems talk about social mobility but short of winning the lottery the only way to guarantee young people from all backgrounds the opportunity to do better and to raise aspirations is through education.

The effects of human rights education can be dramatic in awakening people to the value and power of their own lives as shown in the following stories.

The world we build tomorrow is born in the stories we tell our children today. Politics moves the pieces. Education changes the game.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.

Gradually it occurred to me that we spend a great deal of life asleep and that dreams are little narratives little stories. I thought 'Who's choreographing this stuff?'

I try to help people realize their dreams by using magic to tell stories that educate move and inspire.