The driving force behind 'In Our Time' is that I want an education. I want to know more about science, say, and if I want to know, then other people probably do, too.

The BBC does a sterling job, but I'd like to see it do more. ITV does four arts programmes a year; it used to be 28. At least Sky, with its two arts channels, is trying.

Work is a great blotter up. It stops you thinking, which is useful. No, it stops you feeling.

I don't want closure, I don't know what that means or why you would want it.

I've been writing since I was 19.

I enjoy what was called 'swotting' in my day.

The idea that popular arts were shallow by definition and the traditional arts were profound was dead, I thought, and I wanted to prove it.

I wanted 'The South Bank Show' to reflect my own life and that of the team around me; to stretch the accepted boundaries and challenge the accepted hierarchies of the arts; to include pop music as well as classical music, television drama as well as theatre drama, and high-definition performers in comedy.

Once, the arts were opera, ballet, classical music, and everything else deemed highbrow.

It was my idea for high culture and popular culture to be treated equally.

In a sense, Bond ousted the cowboy as the screen hero, and Ken Adams replaced the horse with technology.

We start out as sand and soot out there in the universe, and who knows, in 40 trillion years' time we might come back. But if we come back without memory, it doesn't really interest me.

I don't believe in a personal God, no. And I don't believe in resurrection as it is in the New Testament.

The best of pop in our country is among the best of the arts that we do. And Britain does the arts as well as, and sometimes better than, anybody else on the planet.

I'll never forget my interview with Barry Humphries - one of the oddest I've ever done. He insisted that for half the time he appeared as Dame Edna. So I interviewed the real Barry Humphries in a suit and tie, and then I interviewed Edna in full fig in her dressing room, where she criticised Barry mercilessly.

I've been making arts programmes for almost 50 years, and every day, I can't believe my luck.

I'm not a fan of the working class being mocked, including by some of our famous writers - even those who came from it.

I decided years ago that I am just unfashionable.

I was brought up in a strong working-class community by working-class parents and relations until I was 18, and that's what I really am. Now all sorts of things have been added, but that's what I am.

My life is not very different from what it was 20 years ago. In fact, my career hasn't changed much since I was 22.

I don't feel like I'm slowing down.

Few places on earth have been as affectionately alchemised into literature as the Lake District.

You ask 20 of your friends how English and American democracy came about. None of them would say that Anglicanism or Protestantism had anything to do with it. But it was crucial to it!

Well, I don't think I'm good-looking... I know people who are good-looking, and I'm not good-looking.