Chatterers are a menace.

No time like the present

Who Saddam Hussein kills, dies.

Birth is life's first lottery ticket.

I've loved art for more than 30 years.

I do greatly admire Australian artists.

Time spent on preparation is seldom wasted.

I find I don't learn a lot while I'm talking

We all make mistakes but one has to move on.

Exclusive will not be published in book format.

I want to be your stranger across a crowded room.

What I have found is that real friends stand by you.

A work of art is worth what someone will pay for it.

I am currently doing about 30 charity auctions a year.

Sixty per cent of people entering prison today are illiterate.

we all suffer in our different ways from being prisoners of birth.

I'm vulgar, I'm a populist. But isn't that what the mayor should be?

Very few people deserted me when I went to prison. They stayed loyal.

I think my attitude to human beings has changed since leaving prison.

With torture ,as with making love, foreplay is the all important factor

If you make a deal with a fool, don't be surprised when they act foolishly.

The popularity of an individual in life often only manifests itself in death.

War and Peace maddens me because I didn't write it myself, and worse, I couldn't.

Are parents always more ambitious for their children than they are for themselves?

When I was three, I wanted to be four. When I was four, I wanted to be prime minister.

The worst moment of any campaign is waiting for the sun to rise on the morning of the battle

While there may not be a book in every one of us, there is so often a damned good short story.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book.

Actually, Sydney is my second favourite city on earth, I love Sydney, but this is the greatest.

It is often spur-of-the-moment decisions, sometimes made by others, that can change our whole lives.

But the thing I felt most strongly about, and put at the end of one of the prison diaries, was education.

At the end of my trial, I was rather hoping the judge would send me to Australia for the rest of my life.

When a book comes out I wonder if one person will buy it. It's agony. Of course it's stupid, but it's agony.

I'm not taking any interest in politics. I'm not involved in politics in any way. My life is in writing now.

I was allowed to ring the bell for five minutes until everyone was in assembly. It was the beginning of power.

Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terrible punishment.

A strong man who has known power all his life may lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength.

I put £150,000 into the stage production of Grease and have got back £1.5 million so far. It has been a fantastic success.

I have discovered with advancing years that few things are entirely black or white, but more often different shades of grey.

Energy plus talent and you are a king, energy and no talent and you are still a prince, talent and no energy and you are a pauper

Some people standby you in your darkest hour while others walk away; only a select few march towards you and become even closer friends.

The discipline required for athletics carried through to writing. You call it obsession. I call it discipline. By the way, I see nothing wrong with that.

I spent my first three weeks there on a wing with 21 murderers. I met some very evil people there but also some men who'd had no upbringing, no chance in life.

We go on a lot in this country about offences being caused by drugs. The truth is just as many offences are caused by drink. And that should be taken into account.

There are defining moments in one's life when you learn about yourself, and you deposit that knowledge in the experience account, so you can draw on it at some later date.

Well I think after leaving prison, and having written three diaries about life in prison, it became a sort of a new challenge to write another novel, to write a new novel.

I feel I have had a very interesting life, but I am rather hoping there is still more to come. I still haven't captained the England cricket team, or sung at Carnegie Hall!

Whenever you analyse anyone who has had any success and they're in the headlines, you will find they are human and make mistakes. I'm certainly that and I've made a lot of mistakes.

Making a million legally has always been difficult. Making a million illegally has always been a little easier. Keeping a million when you have made it is perhaps the most difficult of all.

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