Tim Rice

“I have radios everywhere around the house, very old battered ones that I've had for years and years. None of them are digital.”

“The biggest lesson I had in my life was failure.”

“I love trains. I don't even mind First Great Western, which is a stupid name because it implies every carriage is first class, but they're not.”

“He's a very natural chap. The public David Essex is the same as the private one. He's laid-back, charming, funny. There's no side to him.”

“September is my favourite month, particularly in Cornwall. I felt, even as a child, that if you get a wonderful day in September, you think: 'This could be one of the last, the summer is nea...”

“Maintaining our standard; that's our challenge day-in and day-out.”

“I recently declined to support a Conservative function because I'm so incensed about these wind turbines. Like all so-called climate-change doubters, I am very pro the environment, but I str...”

“We all dream a lot - some are lucky, some are not. But if you think it, want it, dream it, then it's real. You are what you feel.”

“When I went to do law, I kind of drifted through that and thought, 'I can pass these exams.' And I didn't - I failed three times, and each time I did worse and failed by a bigger margin. And...”

“You've got to have a young element in a show. Any project needs youth and dynamism as well old codgerdom and experience.”

“In the Bible, there is absolutely no motivation for Judas, other than that he is sort of a 100 percent figure of evil. And it seemed to me that that was probably not the case.”

“I must have written 15 lyrics for 'The Lion King,' and only five or six were used. Some were scenes that disappeared, some were earlier versions of songs that didn't work, or else the charac...”

“Although I've got lots of pals in showbiz, I haven't got that many close friends.”

“I worked in a petrol station on the A1 one summer. I enjoyed it except when I was on latrine duty.”

“I am sure if you went back to the days of 'My Fair Lady,' they would have had one public dress rehearsal, and that is it. And in a way, I would like to go back to that. Now you have people t...”

“If you now have 20 previews, you will regard 19 of them as super-rehearsals, which is fine, except you are being watched by thousands. I remember suggesting on more than one show over the ye...”

“There is already huge public interest in stage musicals.”

“I think failure is the best thing for some people. It tells you whether you're in the right job or the wrong one.”

“I went to religious schools. I wasn't that enthusiastic, by and large, but it sunk in.”

“Very few artistic partnerships last more than 10 years, and if they do they tend to go down the tubes.”