It was an interesting question as to whether the BBC had a future in the digital world and what form of market failure could justify the licence fee system.

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

So the poet who wants to be something that he cannot be and is a failure in plain life makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.

I believe in trusting men not only once but twice - in giving a failure another chance.

There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.

The failure of national economic policy is costing us more than jobs it has begun to weaken that uniquely American spirit of risk-taking large ambition and optimism about the future. We must rally them now to bold departures that rebuild our national morale as well as our material prosperity.

I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success.

The world is given to me only once not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences for this barrier does not exist.

I had the closest thing I have ever had to an out-of-body experience lying in bed one morning. I turned on the 'Today' programme and item four on the news was: 'The shadow chancellor has ruled himself out of the leadership.' I lay there thinking that's interesting then I realised it was me.

I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort of chipping flint of cultures rubbing against each other. And living on the border between Mexico and the U.S. for so many years gave me a lot of insight into that.