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I was just another long-haired teenage kid with visions of grandeur, strumming a tennis racket or a broom in front of his bedroom mirror.

The thing we call critics are not really reviewers, they are not really critics. They don't have the discipline to write what we would term as critique - it's really just reviewers. They have a common man kind of taste. If you watch them overall, they are not different from the box-office. That's my view.

Remember, weapons of mass destruction don't mean missiles.

'Black Watch' has taken its place in the canon of Scottish theatre, and that's fantastic. It's a very particular kind of theatre. It's about the music, the movement, the whole 'event' of it.

I'd love to meet Darwin. He caused such controversy over whether God created the earth in six days or whether we evolved over time. I'd love to discuss that with him - what a fantastic conversation!

The truth is not so important as the leaving of it behind.

If you go to the ball game, you don't need to read the game story.

The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world. All we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them!

I think because I did become a well-known face in my thirties and not in my twenties, I was pretty settled in my boots and I knew who I was. And I think there's a sort of Scottish thing, too, where you don't take yourself too seriously, and you don't get carried away with your own sense of self-importance.

Sometimes when things are way too big and I can't control it, I do sort of a weird thing where I kind of check out a little bit. It's all about self-preservation for me.

Punk rock has never really had much patience with musical virtuosity. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say that for most of its history, punk has been actively hostile to virtuosity.

One of the things that I realize is that if you look at big business, I mean, they - and what they fund and what they do, they don't really - they don't fund the small non-profit community-based organizations that really are out there on the front lines helping people. They fund the big philanthropies. They're safe.

We know that in tough times, cynicism is just another way to give up, and in the military, we consider cynicism or giving up simply as forms of cowardice.

I think there is something about the Internet which gives people almost an opportunity to role play and to create a facade, an image. I see that as quite a dangerous development because I think what we call social networking, Twitter, Facebook, etc., is actually quite antisocial.

The 'Backlisted' podcast describes itself as 'giving new life to old books'. In each episode, John Mitchinson and Andy Miller are joined by a guest from the world of books who brings along some overlooked gem to enthuse about.

Whenever you go through the length and breadth of our country... you see a long face: you will see the long face of an African woman because she's black, because she's poor.

AS YOU GIVE OUT SO SHALL YOU RECEIVE.

Know who you are, know your mission and educate yourself in your mission field

Classical music has become rarefied, like a maiden aunt that nobody wants to talk to.

My pitching philosophy is simple - keep the ball way from the bat.