Quotes from Jonathan Dimbleby

The moment seemed right to me for a full and, if possible, authoritative portrait of the life and character of the Prince of Wales.

I was obliged to play the piano, like middle-class children are. I didn't start to love it until I was 14.

Food is about communal togetherness. Our family does sit at the table. I think it's a great tragedy if a family doesn't have a table, as there is such an atmosphere of good will and warmth when we have eight people sitting around it.

I've never been a depressive, but I felt quite close to the edge at times. But you never know what's around the corner. Mercifully, what's around the corner is joy.

You have to be damn certain you're putting something better in its place.

That test should not be about ratings. What should weigh is the knowledge that a public broadcaster delivers programmes that matter.

I fail to understand how you can justify a poll tax on the entire population, yet exclude a significant proportion of that population from programmes that this tax is paying for.

I am now certain that we have no alternative but to reduce urgently the levels of carbon that we are still pumping into the atmosphere as though tomorrow simply didn't matter. If we don't act collectively and individually, our children and their children will reap a whirlwind which will obliterate their civilisation.

I have to grit my teeth sometimes, knowing I am going to be written about. But I think it is my life, and I don't want to get people interested in debating it. But I do feel that if you are going to put yourself about as a public person on a television screen, there's a curiosity.

Programme names have been changed, and we have Andrew Neil saying he won't be using long words.

The BBC produces wonderful programmes; it also produces a load of old rubbish.

Ethiopia is engraved on my heart. I first went in 1973 because I heard of a terrible famine. They were denying it even as we got the film out. The coverage destroyed the emperor's credibility.

It is easy enough to hold an opinion, but rather more testing to act on it.

Not every programme dealing with issues of global significance has to be fronted by last week's winner of Have I Got News For You-but I suppose you might be wrong.

Rolling my trousers down to expose the upper part of my buttocks and having a knife pressed up and down my spine by a Russian white witch, as she murmured incantations, was certainly a new experience to cure my backache. It was surprisingly soothing.

Presidents and prime ministers, whether they live in the rich or the poor world, are insulated and isolated from the devastating impact of global poverty. They read the statistics, but they rarely witness at first hand the misery and degradation of life on a dollar a day.

Until I was 21, I wasn't going into the media. I was a professional show jumper; I was going to have a farm... Then my father died, and it changed my life. I realised I had to have a go at being a journalist to see if I could cut the mustard.

Food is important to me, but I wouldn't say that I'm a gourmet. I don't like tricksy food.

I have a great deal of joy in my life, and I'm very fortunate. That combination makes you aware of just how wonderful life can be on the one hand and how dreadful it can be for people on the other. You can't be happy in isolation.

Over the last two years, I have been able to comb through The Prince's archives. I have been free to read his journals, diaries and many thousands of the letters.

I honestly believe that TV generally is obsessed with the ratings battle to the point of cutting its own throat.

I adore Madonna. She reinvents herself like no one else.

That test should not be about ratings. What should weigh is the knowledge that a public broadcaster delivers programmes that matter.

I ought to rejoice in the fact that our principal rival has died, but I don't.