“Giving words is an act of lovers.”

The deed will be accomplished with the least amount of bloodshed possible, and, if possible, we’ll save all the souls and send them happily off to their abode.

I’d gladly do without a valet. I’m never so well treated as when I’m without a valet.

Debts and lies are generally mixed together.

Early rising is no pleasure; early drinking’s just the measure.

When my soul leaves this human dwelling, I will not consider myself to have completely died, but to pass from one state to another, given that, in you and by you, I remain in my visible image in this world.

Because just as arms have no force outside if there is no counsel within a house, study is vain and counsel useless that is not put to virtuous effect when the time calls.

The dress does not make the monk.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

I urge you to spend your youth profitably in study and virtue…. In brief, let me see in you an abyss of knowledge.

Hungry bellies have no ears.

But where are the snows of last year? That was the greatest concern of Villon, the Parisian poet.

When I drink, I think; and when I think, I drink.

You have no obligation under the sun other than to discover your real needs, to fulfill them, and to rejoice in doing so.

The appetite grows with eating.

I’ve often heard it said, as the common proverb goes, that a fool can teach a wise man well.

There are more old drunkards than old physicians.

Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can’t be spoken in words alone.

In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.

It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.

Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.

The ability to absorb a book and make someone else’s words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.

I come from a world where the word ‘trauma’ doesn’t exist, because we are too poor. I didn’t have an easy life compared to the average European. But compared to the average African, it wasn’t all that bad.