We can alleviate physical pain, but mental pain - grief, despair, depression, dementia - is less accessible to treatment. It's connected to who we are - our personality, our character, our soul, if you like.

I've always argued, unsuccessfully, that there's no point in giving money to the arts unless you educate people in them.

I think the collision between the First and Third world is going to become more and more conspicuous. It's the big cliff that we've all got to climb.

Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.

I am interested in the gap between what people say and what they think - the undiscovered world of people's lives. Lives of quiet desperation.

We can alleviate physical pain, but mental pain - grief, despair, depression, dementia - is less accessible to treatment. It's connected to who we are - our personality, our character, our soul, if you like.

I can't think of anyone I admire who isn't fuelled by self-doubt. It's an essential ingredient. It's the grit in the oyster.