Whenever the lion fish in the fish tank in the captain's ready room died it was always a sad moment.

It's always sad if anybody you know has a personal problem.

I always think of the live show first where the song is gonna go in the show. That's why they aren't sad songs. When I play I want to make people happy not sad. It's such a pleasure for me to do what I do and I want other people to feel some form of that pleasure too.

The first series I wrote 'L.A. Candy ' was always meant to be a three-book series so when I started out it was all outlined that way and by the time I was done with the third book I had become so involved and the process and the stories I was a little bit sad to be done.

All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings you don't think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I'm looking at something dead.

And in real life endings aren't always neat whether they're happy endings or whether they're sad endings.

It is one of the most saddening things in life that try as we may we can never be certain of making people happy whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy.

I can see the humorous side of things and enjoy the fun when it comes but look where I will there seems to me always more sadness than joy in life.

In the West audiences think I am a stereotyped action star or that I always play hitmen or killers. But in Hong Kong I did a lot of comedy many dramatic films and most of all romantic roles lots of love stories. I was like a romance novel hero.

Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.