It's very difficult to be continuously charitable in a capitalistic society. You've also got to make sure that you can pay everyone who works for you.

I hear poets complaining: 'We face what our forebears did not face. We face TV. We face radio. We face this and that.'

As with the onset of sudden celebrity, for the newly rich, the world often becomes a darker, narrower, less generous place; a paradox that elicits scant sympathy, but is nonetheless true.

Few things in life are certain except death and being taxed.

People who grow rich almost always improve their sex life. More people want to have sex with them. That's just the way human beings work. Money is power. Power is an aphrodisiac. Money did not make me happy. But it definitely improved my sex life.

America, ladies and gentlemen, has done more for me financially than Britain ever has, or ever could have done.

I don't take investment advice from wealth managers. I have grown several businesses from scratch and amassed many millions from my publishing empire - why would I take advice from someone who has never experienced that?