Andrew Marr quotes:

The only time I penetrated Tony Blair's defenses over Iraq was by keeping eye contact while telling him he never seemed to by sorry

Androgynous fashion, long hair, the Pill, a new interest in the inner psychological life - an unabashed sloppiness, if you will - really marks the sixties. It was when Britain went girlie. And what do girls do? Girls shop.

Interviews, and hence interviewers, are there to help shed light, and to let viewers judge for themselves. We are not judges, juries, commentators or torturers - nor friends, either.

Clearly the human story is one of acceleration. There has been a Moore curve in terms of the number of people alive on the planet, our technological ability, and our ability to understand ourselves. We have had this extraordinary, explosive growth in our ingenuity.

Journalism is nine-tenths being in the right places at the right time.

Verbally, I'm quite fast on my feet. I could embarrass or anger most people if I wanted to.

My big toe alone is the size of Yorkshire.

The British happened to the rest of the world. Now the world happens to Britain.

One aspect of politics too little acknowledged is that besides being jolly serious and all that, it is also a hugely enjoyable game for boys.

My kids wouldn't dream of buying a newspaper - and we are a newspaper household.

In the end, does it really matter if newspapers physically disappear? Probably not: the world is always changing. But does it matter if organisations independent enough and rich enough to employ journalists to do their job disappear? Yes, that matters hugely; it affects the whole of life and society.

I'm a great believer in the direct quote in quotation marks and the hard fact.

Rude interviewers are ten a penny, and politicians have long since learned how to cope.

Journalism is often simply the industrialisation of gossip.

The truth is, "What is a journalist?" is one of those questions for which there is no proper answer. The prehistory of modern journalism shows it has been a ragged and confusing trade all the way through.

The business of funding digging journalists is important to encourage. It cannot be replaced by bloggers who don't have access to politicians, who don't have easy access to official documents, who aren't able to buttonhole people in power.

Hard news really is hard. It sticks not in the craw but in the mind. It has an almost physical effect, causing fear, interest, laughter or shock.

The great background question about the Labour governments of the sixties is whether with a stronger leader they could have gripped the country's big problems and dealt with them. How did it happen that a cabinet of such brilliant, such clever and self-confident people achieved so little? In part, it was the effect of the whirling court politics demonstrated by 'In Place of Strife'.

History is either a moral argument with lessons for the here-and-now, or it is merely an accumulation of pointless facts.