I didn't have a boyfriend until I was 16, and he was eight years older. My father was furious about this 24-year-old, and I had to hide the relationship.

I used to define success as being able to produce any result you wanted, whether it was a relationship, weight-loss, being a millionaire, impacting the culture, changing society, whatever it might be - it might be homelessness, whatever - and lately, I've redefined success as 'fulfilling your soul's purpose.'

I spent eight years with Berlusconi, and I still have a good relationship with him.

My longest relationship with my first boyfriend was eight and a half years. We broke up a handful of times over those years, but he was my first love, I was his, and we were each other's firsts.

I didn't lose weight for my career or a relationship - I did it to be happy and, as Oprah says, to live my best life.

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.

Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.

I've been on both sides: the victim and the villain. I was the victimised model, and everything from my weight to my fertility was held up for discussion. And then I was the person that could garner some kind of positive outcome, by taking on the role of vice chairman of the British Fashion Council and becoming an activist of body image.

I get so many big ideas while I'm running and such clarity while I'm lifting weights. And staying fit keeps me happy and positive.

If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a conceit rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and others of that ilk.

In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practised' enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training.

I wanted to be a poet. I fell in love with poetry around eight years old, but not through literature. Instead, it came through hip-hop lyrics and my obsession with reading liner notes. Queen Latifah's 'Black Reign' is the album that stands out the most.

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words.

There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They're low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cure, but you can hear the reason why - these guys are too sad.

I kind of imagine myself at eighty, a cat lady.

The art of Peace I practice has room for each of the world's eight million gods, and I cooperate with them all. The God of Peace is very great and enjoins all that is divine and enlightened in every land.

When you bat, you need to have a lot of patience. I started training for it from the age of eight or nine. So, I knew what I needed when I stepped on the field to bat.

My wife makes fun of me by calling me a grandpa because I have very little patience for inconsiderate children. So if we're walking in the mall, and some kid goes by really fast on a skateboard, I become the grumpiest eighty-five-year-old man in the world and start screaming at them.

When I worked with wildlife a lot in the Eighties and Nineties, I learnt the meaning of patience. And when I worked with trees, I learned the meaning of humility.