I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot.

All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.

I am so happy to be communicating with people on this newest of new wavelengths which to some older people must seem like a kind of magic.

America can be a very hysterical country intellectually and very puritanical, too. You probably have fun in private, but to the rest of the world you seem to hate fun - to be big on agendas and short on spontaneity. The image you present is one of appalling conformity. The thought police is what you are ruled by.

The kitten was six weeks old. It was enchanting, a delicate fairy-tale cat, whose Siamese genes showed in the shape of the face, ears, tail, and the subtle lines of its body. [...] She sat, a tiny thing, in the middle of a yellow carpet, surrounded by five worshipppers, not at all afraid of us. Then she stalked around that floor of the house, inspecting every inch of it, climbed up on to my bed, crept under the fold of a sheet, and was at home.

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning.