In this business, if you take too long, the landscape changes. So the opportunities that were there when I decided to take a break weren't there when I came back. It's like, 'Wait a second - what happened here?' It was a real learning experience. I've paid my dues, I will tell you that.

The purpose in life is to collaborate for a common cause; the problem is nobody seems to know what it is.

Gerhard Gschwandtner

My mother was born on a tiny farm in County Mayo. She was meant to stay at home and look after the farm while her brother and sister got an education. However, she came to England on a visit and never went back.

Julie Walters

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion... It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider - and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation - persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.

Alexander Graham Bell

If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.

William Shakespeare

The prudent person may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates or ruins it.

Edward George BulwerLytton

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

Herbie Hancock

He who hath many friends hath none.

Aristotle

Bad excuses are worse than none.

Thomas Fuller

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

Benjamin Franklin

When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you will become a general. If you become a monk, then you will end up as Pope.' Instead, I became a painter, and wound up as Picasso.

Pablo Picasso

Stand straight, walk proud, have a little faith.

Garth Brooks

Make hunger thy sauce, as a medicine for health.

Thomas Tusser