A lot of panel programmes rely on men topping each other, or sparring with each other, which is not generally a very female thing.

I haven't got a waist. I've just got a sort of place, a bit like an unmarked level crossing.

My mother, she didn't believe in praise. She'd never say anything was great. I think that's quite Northern, to not make people feel too good. I didn't mind if she was proud of me or not, it didn't bother me. I was never trying to please her.

People always think I hate doing interviews. I don't. I wouldn't do them if I didn't like them.

When I traveled as secretary of state, I was deluged with thick briefing books full of information about the politics, economy, and culture of each destination, so those took up most of my reading time.

We must provide an improved early education system so that all students have the opportunity to learn and reach their full potential.

In every new generation, the impulses supposed to have been rooted out by discipline in the child break forth again when the struggle for existence - of the individual in society, of the society in the life of the state - begins. These passions are not transformed by the prevalent education of the day, but only repressed.

The goal of my University education was to get into a medical college and equip myself to run a hospital in Kumbakonam left behind by my father, M.K. Sambasivan, who died at a young age in 1936.