“I unfortunately don’t speak French, but my wife is now fluent in English, which really reflects rather badly on me.”

The knighthood I received was a fantastic honour but it’s not something I’ve ever used and I don’t think I ever will.

There’s something fundamentally wrong with a system where there’s been 17 years of a Tory Government and the people of Scotland have voted Socialist for 17 years. That hardly seems democratic.

There is nothing like a challenge to bring out the best in man.

Your background and environment is with you for life. No question about that.

I’m fed up with the idiots… the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who green-light the movies.

I’m an actor – it’s not brain surgery. If I do my job right, people won’t ask for their money back.

It would almost need a Mafia-like offer I couldn’t refuse to do another movie.

I’m swimming every day and I’m even trying to get the golf swing working again – but that might take a little bit longer.

To cultivate an English accent is already a departure away from what you are.

You know, the Oscar I was awarded for The Untouchables is a wonderful thing, but I can honestly say that I’d rather have won the U.S. Open Golf Tournament.

If anything could have pulled me out of retirement, it would have been an Indiana Jones film.

It’s a kind of madness in cosmopolitan cities now.

If America had been discovered as many times as I have, no one would remember Columbus.

Some age, others mature.

Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith. For without fear of the devil there is no need for God.

Everyone talks about how they knew the Bond films were going to be a success, but it simply isn’t true.

God wants us so badly that he has made the condition as simple as he possibly could: Only believe.

If you ever want something badly, let it go. If it comes back to you, then it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never yours to begin with.

My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted.

I think the reality is that, that money was probably badly spent.

Given all the changes, both economic and technological, SF hasn’t done too badly.

I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn’t know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.