Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I was really small, my mother had difficulty keeping me dressed, as I liked to be naked! I definitely had very strong ideas on what I wanted to wear. My favourite look was always Action Man and Spiderman. Now though, I really like beautiful clothes.
I liked lots of 'Doctor Who' books, but my favourite tale was a spooky story about two invalid children - who've never met in the real world - who get trapped in a shared dreamscape when they fall asleep. It's called 'Marianne Dreams' by Catherine Storr.
Until I was 16, I read nothing but science fiction. I loved William Gibson and I still do. But my favourite book when I was growing up, for a long time, was 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson, which I must have read about a dozen times when I was a teenager.
My favourite actors are all dead or dying. I just love Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn - I was named after her - and Cary Grant. I just love old black and white movies and the stars in them. It must have been a great time to be in Hollywood.
One of my favourite things about country music is that, at least until recently, you could always count on a solid story, a punchline and a pun. I think it has that in common with hip hop, where they're not afraid of wordplay and I really appreciate that.
It may sound strange to say it of someone so famous, but I think Leonardo DiCaprio is underrated, particularly from an awards perspective. He is a very versatile actor. He started very young, and 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape?' is one of my favourite films.
My favourite pool is located in a remote valley in the eastern Lake District, surrounded by vine-hung cliffs and slippery boulders. It has a torrential sheet waterfall at one end and is almost black in colour, so it appears bottomless, a portal to nowhere.
Marta is one of my favourite players, and one of the best players I've had the privilege of coming up against, so I say this with the greatest respect: there are other players who were in a much stronger position to be named the best female player of 2018.
HeyHey is my favourite app. It's like Instagram but for sound recordings, with little soundbites from people's days. We spend far too much time looking down at our phones, so it's nice to have your head up while you listen to what other people have uploaded.
I live in Cape Town but my favourite holiday destination is Hermanus, a little seaside town about a 90-minute drive away, over the pass and down to the sea, on the sunshine coast. It's where I love to escape to with my wife for a weekend every now and again.
When I was about ten my favourite article in the huge and mouldering Encyclopedia Britannica we owned (the ninth edition) was the one on Lycanthropy. (Yes, I had a favourite 1890s Britannica article when I was ten. I am now aware this is not entirely usual.)
'Simply the Best' has always been one of my favourite songs and a song that I've always thought was far deeper than what you imagine it to be at first listen. I found the lyrics to be really, oddly beautiful, considering you rarely stop and think about them.
Magne Furuholmen is a very dear friend of mine. A-ha are a classic pop band and they've got some brilliant songs. I'd say 'The Living Daylights' was one of my favourite Bond tunes: regardless of it being a Bond song, it stands alone as a great piece of music.
Performing live is not my favourite. I am more of a recording person; I prefer to be private. I didn't mind doing videos, even if they came very close with the camera. I can take that, but walking on stage in concert and singing live, that is a bit difficult.
I've always been a big fan of Thierry Henry. I enjoy watching all the great players, really. But we're always drawn to some players more than others, and in my case, it's Titi. He's my favourite player. I also really liked Luis Figo when he was at Real Madrid.
My favourite room in my house is easily the top room, which is a bedroom but also a bathroom, with a big, wooden carved bath, two huge fireplaces and a raised bit in the corner for performances. I've had some really lovely parties and poetry readings up there.
I cannot pick one single forest to be a favourite, but I am in love with the Indian jungles - be it Madhumalai and Kabini in South India or Tadoba and Pench National Park in Maharashtra. The wildlife in Satpura and Corbett National Park can't be missed, either.
I think I would have one favourite jacket, one favourite pair of sneakers - like, from every kind of thing I do have my favourite - but they're often the things I wear the least because I just want to keep them nice, so I don't really tend to wear them as much.
Topshop is one of my favourite shops, and I love shoes by Giuseppe Zanotti. There's a graduate fashion designer called Kate Falcus who makes me beautiful commissioned pieces - one of my favourites was the white Glastonbury dress she made me with the puffy skirt.
The social aspects of food are really important to me - my favourite food-related memories are meals I've shared with my family and friends. Posting Instagram pictures of your food and then seeing your friends comment on it is just a modern form of that kinship.
Perhaps the writer I've read the most of is Haruki Murakami, the Japanese writer, but I wouldn't necessarily say he's a favourite. I read him because I find his work so intriguing, but I don't necessarily feel I would follow this writer to the ends of the earth.
I like all kinds of food, but if I had to choose a favourite Indian cuisine, it would absolutely be Bengali! I love things like masoor dal with begun bhaja - or any type of bhaja, really - machher jhol, bhapa chingri. And how can you beat gorom, gorom rosogolla?
I was always interested in the arts as a child - drawing, painting, and piano - but acting became a favourite. I was a major theatre geek in high school - if I wasn't in the drama room at lunch rehearsing, I'd be in the art room finishing up some type of project.
My favourite restaurant of all time is Mildreds on London's Lexington Street. It's a little vegetarian restaurant and is really fun and healthy, too. It was the first place I went to in London and really liked. That was 20 years ago, and it is still my favourite.
I tried to emulate my favourite guitar players, the old bluesmen like Blind Willie McTell and Big Bill Broonzy. I used to sit by the record player and copy Chuck Berry and the Beatles. You can never copy someone completely, so you end up developing your own style.
I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks.
Ilaiyaraaja is my most favourite music director. His music was my lullaby, his music was my food, his music was my childhood, his music was my first love, his music was my failure, his music was my first kiss, my first love failure, my success... he is in my blood.
With racing, there's not one thing you need to be really strong at, it's a combination. You need a good base of cardio, good core, good neck strength. I think core and neck are the most important, but it's certainly not my favourite. Neck training is pretty boring.
My favourite book - 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford, which I have read about 20 times - is different from my favourite author, who is Iris Murdoch. I find her books exciting and unputdownable. Her characters are so carefully studied and in-depth; I love that.
My favourite writers are always great storytellers, like Bruce Springsteen; I adore Bruce Springsteen. I feel like he doesn't beat around the bush, and he doesn't overcomplicate things. He puts things into layman's terms and tells stories that anyone can understand.
The computer is my favourite invention. I feel lucky to be part of the global village. I don't mean to brag, but I'm so fast with technology. People think it all seems too much, but we'll get used to it. I'm sure it all seemed too much when we were learning to walk.
When I was about 14 I remember thinking when it came to proposing to my future girlfriend, I'd make a CD with all her favourite songs and a message that said, 'Will you marry me?' Shows you what a romantic I was. No one listens to CDs any more. It's all about iTunes.
Any person I idolise, or I really admire their work, I want to beat them... For me, going through my years, I made sure to idolise myself... So when you're in a race, you have to make sure that you think you are the favourite to win. You have to have that confidence.
'Turtles' was by far my favourite TV show when I was growing up. It would be the show that I would wanna watch more than anything. We'd record it on the big VHS tapes, and I'd watch it before school, after school, on the weekend, wear the costume, have all the weapons.
My favourite language, actually, is Czech, just because it's so colourful. We have so many combinations, words, and expressions. I have to say there are a lot of things which you can say in Czech, but you cannot really translate, because the meaning would make no sense.
Theatre outings are my favourite thing to spend money on. The most influential play I saw was 'Bent,' which starred Ian McKellen. And I loved the original performance of 'The Rocky Horror Show,' with Richard O'Brien and Tim Curry at the Royal Court, when I was about 15.
I was brought up in Zimbabwe, and there were seven of us in my family, so it was difficult to read aloud to us all. There weren't that many picture books around in the Fifties in Zimbabwe. My favourite was Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter, which was really frightening.
I don't feel like a live set even seems super real for an electronic act like me. It's not really that entertaining. I've seen a lot of my favourite acts take it to a new level with a live band and stuff, which is amazing, but for me, a live set would be boring to watch.
The mornings along the coast where the fog and mist meet with the salty spray of the seas is one of my favourite smells. I love the smell in the evergreen forest just after it rains - The Redwood Forest in California has the coast, too, so you have the best of everything!
'Blood Host' is super heavy. Especially on the verses, it has an industrial stomp. It's one of my favourite tracks just because the plot of it is so heavy. It's a total crushing tune; it doesn't get any heavier than that main riff, just a straight quarter-note powerhouse.
Umm... my favourite Wizkid tune of all time would be 'Don't Dull' 'cos I recorded the track in, like, 5 minutes. The beat was ready, we went into the studio and freestyled, and it was ready. The song became really, really big, so I think 'Don't Dull' is still my favourite.
My favourite Friday treat is to drive out of the centre of Cambridge, where we live, and go for a swim at the health club I've just joined out in the countryside at Quy. It's a lovely pool, inside a converted barn. Usually it's just me and a couple of other swimmers there.
I never had a favourite book! I liked all kinds of things - science fiction, so I read Heinlen and Ray Bradbury, and I also liked reading about kids like myself, so I read Judy Blume and Norma Klein and Paula Danzinger and a lot of other writers. I also read James Herriot!
Moorcock's interlinked 'Eternal Champion' series is a constant source of enjoyment. Of its tragic hero incarnations, my favourite is 'Elric of Melnibone,' and the best book has to be 'Stormbringer.' And as for that other sword, Excalibur? Pah! Use it to spread your butter.
I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was writing 'The Last Runaway'.
The nightlife in Baltimore is very mixed. Any gay people I know go to the hipster bars; they don't go to the gay bars. Start your night at the Club Charles, and then you can meet people to go other places. The Charles has been Baltimore's favourite cool hipster bar forever.
I remember my first scene with Alan Rickman, and I was anxious because he is a slight 'method' actor; as soon as he is in his cloak, he walks and talks like Snape - it is quite terrifying. But I really wanted to talk to him because 'Robin Hood' was one of my favourite films.
My favourite two festivals have always been the Big Day Out and Summersonic in Japan. The Big Day Out is a little more fun because it lasts longer. It's like an abbreviated version of the Warped tour because you get to play with the same people every day, which is really fun.
St. Michaels Mount is a favourite place of mine; people will walk across to the Mount all day and assume they will be able to walk home. The spectacle of hundreds of people realising that the path they walked over on is disappearing under several feet of water is very amusing.
We used to have prawn tempura: that was my mother's favourite dish. But she had to go out to work instead of my father, so she couldn't find the time to cook nice meals. So we ate more modern food: a lot of frozen and instant food. But I never complained about it to my mother.