Quotes from Alastair Campbell

My public caricature - that of a self-confident alpha male - is only partly accurate.

So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died, I felt like I had lost a limb.

May I share with you my earliest memory of a political row? It was with my mother, about the Queen - classic Freudian stuff, shrinks would say. I was eight, and refusing to watch the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast.

Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that's where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness.

To me, marriage is partly a religious thing and I'm not religious.

Clinton is a big personality who has led a big life, and for some of the media conventional wisdom to boil it down to a view that 'all people are really interested in' are a few moments of madness in the Oval Office gets him, the importance of the presidency, and the significance of his life, all wrong.

My dad, Donald, was a vet and had a practice in Yorkshire. Cats and dogs were his bread and butter, but his greatest love was large animals.

There has been a shift to what may be defined as a culture of negativity which goes well beyond coverage of politics.

We should confine booing in sports arenas to sport. I love a good boo as much as the next football fan.

Failure, it is thought, is what sells, and what people want to hear and read about. I am not so sure.

By asking the question 'Am I happy? ' and via the answer setting out what I mean by happiness, there is a political route that can be taken, by asking another question - 'Can politics deliver happiness, and should it try?'

May I share with you my earliest memory of a political row? It was with my mother, about the Queen - classic Freudian stuff, shrinks would say. I was eight, and refusing to watch the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast.

So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died, I felt like I had lost a limb.

The thing about politicians in Britain is that they are out there, you can lobby them, get close to them, there are loads of ways you can protest against them, and booing is a pretty weak way of doing it.

I will continue to help the political causes I believe in in any way I can.

The pressures to get the story first, if wrong, are greater sometimes than the pressures to get the story right, if late.

I have always been driven. I have always believed in what I believe very deeply.

Like most meaningful activities, campaigns are team games.

Tony's [Blair] convinced I'm going to find God. I do have spiritual moments, but I don't think it's God.

I'm certainly driven, I hate losing, I can be ruthless and short-tempered and terribly competitive.

My aunty says I'm the double of my father. He was a workaholic, which I've definitely inherited. And like me, he could be the life and soul of the party, but also quite withdrawn.

I used to be very routine-based and the new thing in my life is not having a clear, full-time existence.

There are many reasons for the decline in royal esteem. One is that so many of the royals are thick.

I want to write more books, see my first novel made into a film, fight more campaigns, work in more countries. I want to be able to recall experiences that have endured for their pleasure and range and intensity.