Richard Branson

Listen – it makes you sound smarter.

While I love technology and social media, a text or a tweet can never replace the real value of conversation.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

I aspire to be Jack Nicholson. I love every single mannerism. I used to try and be him in virtually everything I did, I don’t know why. I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when I was about 13, and I dressed like him. I tried to do his accent. I did everything like him. I think it’s kind of stuck with me.

I sing and dance as well, and I would like to do the whole Hilary Duff thing.

To play June, I had an immediate connect with her background and culture. We grew up with the same religion and shared a lot of the same values of family and spirituality. But I was really so inspired by what a modern woman she was.

If I had to describe (the past ten years) I would say ‘blessed’. Blessed and highly favoured, because the things that have happened to me have been once in a lifetime.

I always said marriage should be a fifty-fifty proposition. He should be at least fifty years old, and have at least fifty-million dollars.

The only reward for anything is food.

I think people fetishize glasses in general. You could put glasses on a rotting pumpkin and people would think it was sexy.

It’s nice having famous people love you.

For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness.

When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to – in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet – very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.

Like many, I don’t watch Saturday Night Live (even though I past hosted it) – no longer funny, no talent or charm. It is just a political ad for the Dems. Word is that Kanye West, who put on a MAGA hat after the show (despite being told “no”), was great. He’s leading the charge!

I don’t do too well there. If you were brought up in London, where you can walk around everywhere and there are theaters, you can’t really do LA. I couldn’t make a life there. You’re in a car all the time, and there are no seasons.

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.

So when I come across as being everybody’s mate and nice and humble, I’m only nice and humble to a certain degree; the other side of me is arrogantly determined to do what the f**k I want.

Whenever I have bid a hasty goodbye to a loved one, I’ve always made sure that my record collection was safely stored away in the boot of the car….Sometimes the parting was so fast, I was not able to get them into alphabetical order, but I still got away with my records, that was essential.