I’ve got a quiet voice. I think it’s because as a child I didn’t speak very much. I used to put my fingers in my ears to feel the silence, which was like a lovely...

I feel traveling certainly does broaden the mind. In my case certainly I feel more confident. It gives you a new perspective on the world.

There is no such thing as an average person. They really are guidelines for people to grapple with the unknown, and we can always surprise expectations.

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don’t know what drives it or what constitutes it. It’s one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it’s impossible to define.

I was desperate for a friend, and I used to lie in bed at night thinking about what it would be like. My younger brothers and sisters had friends, and I used to watch them...

My family supported me. I wasn’t hot-housed at all as a young child; I didn’t go to any kind of gifted school. They didn’t exist in the very poor parts of England when I grew...

If when we are taught English we are just taught the rules of grammar, it would take all our love of our language away from us. What makes us love a subject like English is...

I consider social skills a bit like learning a language. I’ve been practising it for so long over so many years I’ve almost lost my accent.

Fischer, the great American chess champion, famously said, ‘Chess is life.’ I would say, ‘Pi is life.’