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" 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. "

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" Darwin talks about evolution, but he doesn't say how it started. Maybe the sense of mystery will dissolve in the face of science, but I am not so sure. We are all described by the human genome, but it's getting people nowhere. "

Melvyn Bragg

Mystery

Science

People

" It is in our culture that we don't want to admit that our culture is good. "

" I don't get nervous when I'm interviewing someone on film - it can be cut, and we can do it again. It is quite nerve-racking doing things live. "

" 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'm addicted to 'Game Of Thrones.' "

" Autobiographical fiction is very tricky. "

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

" A lot of the novels that I've really enjoyed in my life, whether it's Tolstoy's 'Cossacks,' or 'Sons and Lovers' or 'Jude the Obscure' or 'David Copperfield' or 'Herzog,' have an autobiographical spine. "

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

" Like university science departments, the arts have shown how they can earn their way and point to an economically newborn future for this country. They show that the U.K. could be a prime provider of imaginative riches and intellectual adventure, which I think are the two great prizes of the 21st century. "

" A structure is a bit like a story. People will go along with you - they see where you're going. "

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

" I do think the BBC could do more, but I've always thought the BBC could do more - I think there should be more arts programmes full stop. "

" Control, like curiosity, can be an exterminator. "

Melvyn Bragg

Curiosity

Control

" There is some brilliant pop music and some very poor classical music. And why shouldn't comedy be treated as seriously as drama? "

" I just got fed up with the Protestantism that I'd been brought up with being rubbed out, disregarded. There's an awful lot of frailty and doubt about it, which I understand and share, but there are certain things you just have to acknowledge. "

" I am 74 now. Looking back, I have a sense of not really being in control of my career. I just went where it took me. "

" I think television does tease out a certain vanity in everybody when you look at yourself and you go, 'Oh Christ.' Maybe that's why my intros get shorter and shorter. "

" I decided years ago that I am just unfashionable. "

" Now, perfectly ordinary people will give each other hugs. I mean, it used to be that a hug was reserved for if you came back from Australia - you know, back in the '40s and '50s. "

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

Melvyn Bragg

Slowing

Feel

" I was born in a radio world, and I got so much from it. "

" We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class... and now people like me are in the House of Lords. "

Melvyn Bragg

You

People

" What artists are doing, and what people who are receiving the arts are doing, is entering into this agreement to occupy a parallel world. The parallel world is ever-expanding. We used to think that it existed only for people who were wealthy, well-born, or educated. It isn't like that. "

" We got a copy of the 'New Statesman' at my grammar school in Wigton, Cumbria, in the 1950s. It sat mint fresh every week on the library table, with two or three other bargain-offer magazines. The 'Statesman' came out of the unimaginable Great World. I started to read it then and have pegged along ever since. "

" I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't. "

Melvyn Bragg

Remember

You

" Love of place is one of the characteristics I enjoy most about novelists. "

" 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 was the only BBC graduate trainee in 1961 interested in arts broadcasting. I knew I wanted to write, and I had to make a living. "