"I am hoping very much to get re-elected but it is going to be a tough fight."

"The job of mayor of London is unbelievably taxing, particularly in the run-up to the Olympics."

"We are experiencing such large support for the Olympic relay that our advice is to stay in your neighbourhood, stay in your borough and wait for it to come near you."

"The euro has become a means by which superior German productivity is able to gain an absolutely unbeatable advantage over the whole eurozone territory."

"There's an idea that London is a planet on its own: that it's starting to diverge from the rest of the solar system. We need to combat that."

"So I'm definitely in favour of stimulating the dynamic wealth creation sectors of the economy."

"I'm made up of immigrant stock. I went to a primary school in London. I grew up eating Spangles, why shouldn't I be as well placed to speak for Londoners as anyone else?"

"I'm not particularly politically correct, so I tend to reflect what I think are the terrible realities of life, which I think are, generally speaking, conservative."

"The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition."

"That is the best case for Bush; that, among other things, he liberated Iraq. It is good enough for me."

"I'm a one-nation Tory."

"If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn't ever get anywhere."

"The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP they have run out of better ideas."

"The idea that the EU is somehow the guarantor of peace on the continent - that is in itself rash, in my view, and risks undermining the vital role of Nato."

"It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and a parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio, writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time."

"My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."

"I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest."

"I believe we now have a glorious opportunity: we can pass our laws and set our taxes entirely according to the needs of the U.K. economy."

"It is easy to make promises - it is hard work to keep them."

"My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it."

"If we vote to Leave and take back control, all sorts of opportunities open up. Including doing new free trade deals around the world, restoring Britain's seat on all sorts of international bodies, restoring health to our democracy and belief to our democracy."

"I've got more in common with a three-toed sloth than I have with Winston Churchill. There is no easy comparison with any modern politician. The more you read about him, the more completely amazed you are about what he did - his energy, his literary fecundity, his ability to work - just unbelievable energy."

"If we get outside the EU, if we leave the EU system, we will be relieved of a huge amount of unnecessary regulation that is holding this country back. We will be able to set our own priorities, make our own laws and set our own tax policies to suit the needs of this country. We have a huge opportunity also to make people's votes count for more."

"If you turn a blind eye to fare evasion, if you accustom people to getting away with minor crime, you are making it more likely that they will go on to commit more serious crimes. That is why we have so much disorder in London. It is a disgrace."

"I just find it absolutely bizarre that we are being lectured by the Americans about giving up our sovereignty and giving up control when the Americans won't even sign up to the international convention on the law of the seas, let alone the International Criminal Court."

"We were told by President Obama that in respect of international trade, we would have to get to the back of the queue - not a position that America normally requires the United Kingdom to be in when it comes to other matters, such as the Iraq War."

"I'm in politics to change things - if possible, for the better. I was a journalist for a long time, but I had a kind of midlife crisis, and I decided I needed to do something to get on the pitch and stop endlessly kicking over other peoples' sandcastles."

"Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff."

"I think I'm basically a liberal Conservative - I believe in low tax, spirit of free enterprise, and in making sure that we as politicians create the framework for business to produce the dosh that we're going to need to pay for the poorest. And the longer I live, the more I think that we all have a duty to each other."

"When lorry drivers come up behind me and I'm cycling, innocently keeping to my side of the road, and they decide because they are so big, and their lorry is so powerful, and they just want to clear me out of the road, and they hoot aggressively, then I do see red a bit. I do."

"If I'd been on the Remain side I would have tried to have seen the best in Europe and tried to explain that. Instead, what they've done is endlessly try and talk up what they see as the weaknesses of Britain and they aren't there. That's a total mistake."

"The Remain campaign... I've never seen a more miserable offering. All they are saying is stay in and we'll do our best to make sure that Britain's Parliamentary independence isn't eroded faster than we can possibly imagine."

"The truth is that the history of the last couple of thousand years has been broadly repeated attempts by various people or institutions - in a Freudian way - to rediscover the lost childhood of Europe, this golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans, by trying to unify it."

"My point was very simple, and it was that it is absolutely absurd for the United States of America to continue to urge us further down the line towards a federal superstate when the U.S. has not even signed up to the U.N. Convention on Human Rights."